[autotag]Caio Borralho[/autotag] sat in the corner of a São Paulo gym and glanced up at the clock on the wall. The time for the meetup was near, but there was no sign of his man yet. Fighters filed in, ready for their training sessions.
Behind them entered a smaller man. He didn't strike Borralho as a fighter. Borralho wasn't sure exactly who he was looking for, but this couldn't be the guy.
"Are you Caio? Are you here to train?" he asked. Borralho nodded and replied, "Yeah, I came to train." Borralho followed the man, questioning the decision making that led him to this point.
It was 2014 and a few weeks prior to the meetup with the man who would change the course of his life, Borralho asked friend and fellow fighter Bruno Murata how he could fast-track his striking game. At that time, Borralho was solely a grappler. His standup game was novice, so Murata recommended a mutual friend, Pablo Sucupira, a muay Thai competitor and boxing specialist.
Wrong. What surprised Borralho more than Sucupira's unassuming appearance was the beatdown he dished out during their first training session. Borralho remembers peeling himself up off the mat, depleted after just a few minutes.
The hard training session that day marked the start of a beautiful bond between teacher and pupil. Initially, Sucupira had one foot in the boxing world and Borralho cross-training with Demian Maia's team. But as time passed, Sucupira became Borralho's go-to coach, and Borralho became Sucupira's star student.
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