Still a child in Sorocaba, Maldonado lifts weights. Photo: Personal Archive
Think fast. If you could choose a fictional character to compare to UFC light heavyweight Fábio Maldonado, who would it be? If your answer was Rocky Balboa, through endurance and willpower, you came closer to the fighter's own result, and certainly the vast majority's. In an exclusive interview with SUPER FIGHTS, granted on Children's Day, Maldonado recalled his childhood days and revealed that all he wanted was to be like the “Italian Stallion”.
“When I watched the Rocky Balboa movie, I wanted to be like him. Like everyone else, I wanted to be a football player and everything, but it was more distant, it never attracted me as much. My dream was always to be like Rocky, a champion”, said Maldonado, who recalled the marathons of the series about the Philadelphia boxer. “I've already rented all five films at once. I mean, the rental company didn't have the third one, it was rented. So I spent the whole weekend watching and rewatching Rocky 1, 2, 4 and 5,” he said.
Years later, through his professional MMA career, the already known “Steel Hillbilly” had the opportunity to make the boy Fábio's dream come true and meet the creator and performer of Rocky Balboa. “I got to meet Sylvester Stallone in 2009. Minotauro introduced us to his training center in Rio de Janeiro and I was very happy. Stallone was very nice, he talked to us and was very humble. And that was one of my big motivations,” he revealed.
Childhood in Sorocaba was filled with street games
When talking about his childhood in the city of Sorocaba (SP), Fábio Maldonado revealed that he experienced a reality that is quite common to children who grew up in the countryside, with a lot of playing in the street. For “Caipira de Aço”, however, one had special prominence: the bets – bat and ball game derived from cricket and which is also known in the rest of Brazil as tacoball, Pé no Bete, Bete-Ombro or simply Bete.
“I spent my childhood in Jardim Zulmira, where I live, and when I was younger in Vila Santana, when my father still lived with my mother. I really liked playing in the street. From 'Police and Thieves', playing football and especially the Bets. We took the bats, the ball and the can and went out into the street, I spent my life like that. While I liked to play, I wasn't much of a talker. But at least I didn’t fight a lot at school either”, he pondered.
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