Daniel Straus and Taming the ‘Pitbull’

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When Daniel Straus enters the cage on Friday at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, he hopes the third time will be the charm. There, in the Bellator 145 main event, he will challenge Bellator MMA featherweight champion Patricio Freire -- a man to whom he has already lost twice.

Straus anticipates a different outcome this time, but the Cincinnati fighter did not expect to get another crack at Freire so soon after being dispatched by the Brazilian 10 months ago. Their back-and-forth battle at Bellator 132 on Jan. 16 ended with the American submitting to a rear-naked choke late in the fourth round, curtailing his quest to regain the championship he once held. Considering the depth of Bellator’s featherweight division, not many people, Straus included, thought he would resurface as the No. 1 contender less than a year later.

“I thought I would have had to have two, maybe three more [wins] before I got back there,” Straus told Sherdog.com, “but then again, you have to look at how our last matchup went down and how all these other matchups have gone across the board. There were a couple of 145ers who got hurt; some other guys had wins, but they weren’t impressive; and I think the reason it happened this way was because of how the pot got stirred. I had a great comeback win, and I was ready to fight. There was an opening for this fight card, and I think it made sense.”

Not everyone was thrilled with Straus being paired with “Pitbull” again, pointing to Pat Curran and Georgi Karakhanyan as other worthy contenders. However, the American Top Team representative believes he earned his spot with a guillotine choke submission on then-unbeaten former King of the Cage champion Henry Corrales at Bellator 138 and brushes aside those who think otherwise.

“They ain’t said it to me, so I don’t really give a [expletive],” said Straus, who has compiled a 10-3 record in Bellator. “If they got the shot [instead of me], they would be saying the same s--- I’m saying right now. You can cry and whine about it all day until you’re in that position. If I was in the other position, I’d probably cry about it, too. I’d be like, ‘Why’d this mother[expletive] get this s--- and not me?’

“But hey, I’m the one who is in the driver’s seat,” he added. “I’m the number-one contender. I ain’t trying to hear it. My job is to fight. I don’t focus on what other people have to say. S---, I ain’t even focused on what ‘Pitbull’ has to say. I only worry about what my coaches are telling me, what I’m working on and fight time.”

Straus has won 20 of his last 23 fights, losing only to Curran and Freire (twice). The 31-year-old said he has invested extra hours in the gym, focusing on the details in an attempt to close the holes in his game that have cost him in the past. Focused on the opportunity in front of him, Straus claimed that he was not overly concerned about the changes the Brazilian might have made since their first rematch in January; and he did not learn anything new from Freire’s successful title defense against Daniel Weichel on June 19 in a bout in which “Pitbull” was nearly knocked out in the first round.

“I don’t really know about what changes he will make,” Straus said. “I don’t really focus on that, but I do know that he’s going to try and block those teeth. I know he don’t want none of that no more, but outside of that, my changes have been small. I’ve focused on not giving up my back and working a lot on my jiu-jitsu. But then again, I’ve still been working a lot on my hands, too. It’s just the small mistakes I’ve been making in my career that I’ve been working on and trying to fix. These repairs to my overall game might come overnight, [and] they might not.”

A win over Freire would bring back Straus to what he considers the most memorable time in his career, to when he captured the featherweight title from Curran via unanimous decision at Bellator 106 in November 2013.

“Winning the belt was an emotional high for me,” he said. “It was very emotional because even after all the training I did, I never ever thought I’d be in that position to begin with. When I started [in MMA], I never thought I’d get a chance to fight for a world title, and there I was, with the gold around my waist. Now, I get to do it again.”