Patricio Freire blasts fellow double-champ Conor McGregor

November 12 marked the three-year anniversary of Conor McGregor becoming the first simultaneous two-division champion in UFC history.

McGregor took to Twitter to reminisce on this accomplishment, and was promptly ripped by Bellator’s Patricio “Pitbull” Freire, who currently holds the Bellator featherweight and lightweight belts — the same belts McGregor held in the UFC.

Freire blasted McGregor for failing to defend either of his titles, and worse, for making “an embarrassment of himself and the sport every day since.”

Says the shitty champ champ who didn’t have the balls to defend either title after years of criticizing fighters for not doing so, then made an embarassment of himself and the sport every day since. https://t.co/7eCXuaAvwM

— Patricio Pitbull (@PatricioPitbull) November 13, 2019

“Happy World Champ Champ day everybody,” McGregor wrote on Twitter on November 12.

“Says the shitty champ champ who didn’t have the balls to defend either title after years of criticizing fighters for not doing so, then made an embarrassment of himself and the sport every day since,” Freire wrote in response.

McGregor won his first UFC title when he knocked out Jose Aldo to claim the featherweight belt. After a pair of battles with Nate Diaz, he then captured the lightweight belt with a knockout of Eddie Alvarez.

Since becoming a two-division champion, McGregor has fought twice. One of those fights occurred in the boxing ring, where he was stopped in the 10th round by Floyd Mayweather. The other occurred in October, 2018, when he was defeated by Khabib Nurmagomedov in a bid to reclaim the UFC lightweight belt, which he was stripped of due to inactivity.

Freire, meanwhile, is one of the most accomplished fighters in Bellator history. The Brazilian began his latest run as featherweight champ in 2017, when he avenged a previous loss to Daniel Straus. He then interspersed featherweight title defenses over Daniel Weichel, Emanuel Sanchez and Juan Archuleta with a lightweight title victory against Michael Chandler.

What do you think of Freire’s comments toward Conor McGregor? Are his criticisms fair?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 11/13/2019.