![\"wanderlei-ko.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/wanderlei-ko.jpg\")
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Screengrab<\/p>\n
Mixed martial arts legend Wanderlei Silva’s foray into boxing took a bizarre turn, followed by a brutal one. Silva was facing former two-division world champion Acelino Freitas in an exhibition fight at Spaten Fight Night 2 in Sao Paulo, Brazil when he was disqualified after a clearly intentional headbutt.<\/p>\n
Exhibition boxing often looks like little more than a glorified sparring match. Bouts between former MMA and boxing stars became a frequent staple of the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Rather than the standard easy approach to such a fight, Silva appeared to grow increasingly frustrated as Freitas, who retired from professional competition in 2017 with a career record of 41-2 with 34 knockouts, was clearly the superior boxer.<\/p>\n
At one point, Silva pinned Freitas in the corner and ignored the referee’s instructions to separate, leading to a point deduction. Just a few minutes later, Silva launched his head into Freitas’ and lost a second point. It didn’t take much longer before Silva had been disqualified from the exhibition.<\/p>\n
After the fight, both teams were in the ring when shoving began. Silva was struck with a blow from behind from what appeared to be a Freitas team member. The chaos continued to build before someone landed a sweeping right hand to Silva’s chin, sending the MMA legend crashing to the canvas unconscious.<\/p>\n
Silva was a former PRIDE middleweight champion and competed in the UFC both prior to and after his storied run in the Japanese promotion. A fan favorite for his wild brawling style, Silva retired as a member of the Bellator roster in 2018 with a record of 35-14-1. He was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame as a part of the Pioneer Wing in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Screengrab Mixed martial arts legend Wanderlei Silva’s foray into boxing took a bizarre turn, followed by a brutal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,638,82],"class_list":["post-174557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}