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There is old saying that goes, “It is not what happens to you that counts, it is how you react to it!” It seems that Acelino Freitas’s negative mental reaction to his loss to Diego Corrales last August has created far more damage then the mere loss of a fight regardless how brutal that loss might have been. After winning almost all the rounds against Corrales up until the eighth and ninth frames, Freitas ran out of the gas and got knocked down twice before the quitting. The majority of the boxing public scorned him for quitting while a few of us were saying that quitting in circumstances when a fighter knows that he cannot turn the fight around is a wise decision as it allows him to come back and fight another day.
Well, the boxing public is still waiting for Freitas to come and fight another day. After having couple of bouts with opponents ranked below the top hundred, Freitas seems to be drifting away further and further from the boxing limelight. I wonder how can a single loss destroy fighter’s confidence so much? The answer to that lies solely in psychology and not so much in boxing. Freitas was treated in his native Brazil like a demigod. What Naseem Hamed was to his fans in Sheffield, England, Acelino was to millions of his fans in Brazil. The similarities between the two of them doesn’t stop there as both were relying on their tremendous punching power, while putting defensive skills on the back seat and both boxers had a common coach in Oscar Suarez. Most significantly, neither boxer seemed to be mentally equipped to cope with defeat.
So, in my view, if Freitas is to make comeback, he should be doing the following: first, work with a top class sporting psychologist in order to rebuild his confidence. Then he must tighten-up his offensive arsenal; getting rid of the wild, wide shots that leave him exposed to counterpunches. He should then work on drastically improving his porous defense, and most of all work on his physical conditioning. And lastly, he must break the ties with his trainer Oscar Suarez.
Suarez seems to put far too much emphasis on a boxer’s strengths and too little on areas that are weak. We often forget that the strongest chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Without improving his weak areas Freitas will struggle against elite boxers in lightweight and super lightweight divisions.
Now, let’s imagine that Freitas has done all of the above. The next question would be, whom should he fight next? In lightweight division, fights against Zahir Rahim, Lakva Sim or Ricky Quiles would be good tests to get mandatory fights against any of the champions at 135, and fights against winner of the Corrales – Castillo 3 or the Barrera – Jesus Chavez fights would be legitimate comeback contests.
And if rumors are true that he is moving up to the super lightweight division then fights against such gatekeepers as Lovemore Ndou and Demarcus Corley would pretty much indicate whether he has future at 140.
So, Freitas has loads of options but the question is what he is waiting for? A year and half of abstinence from top-flight boxing should be more than enough regain the hunger, focus and composure needed to mount a serious comeback. And that is what all of us boxing fans are hoping for.
