Paulo Costa was just like any other kid in Brazil in the late 1990s. He enjoyed playing soccer, but wasn’t really good at it. He would get into fights at school, and in the streets of Contagem, but always dodged major consequences.
Unlike many other UFC stars, he didn’t click immediately when doing martial arts for the first time—and tragedy moved him far from it at one point of his life —but he couldn’t walk away from destiny.
The handsome fighter who now posts selfies almost every day on social media hated taking pictures back in the day (“We had the toughest times trying to take a photo of him when he was a kid,” his mother Maria Augusta said).