Eight-time world champion in five different jiu-jitsu categories, Leandro Lo, from São Paulo, who was shot in the head at dawn this Sunday (7), did not have the modality as his first choice in childhood.
Used to seeing his father, Luciano Pereira, train boxing, he wanted to learn the art of boxing. His motivation, however, was not to compete as his father once did. Lo really wanted to know how to defend himself.
At school, he was often the target of bullies willing to pick fights to impress the other students. Learning a fight, for him, therefore, was a matter of survival.
“On the street, at school, you’re always terrified of the bigger kids. So, I said: ‘if I fight, I’ll know how to defend myself'”, said Lo during an interview with the Back to Back channel, on YouTube.
Before he thought of putting on a glove, however, his father vetoed boxing. Luciano approved of his son’s interest in wrestling, but he didn’t want boxing because of the frequent blows to the head.
Leandro then tried to learn karate and then capoeira. At the age of 14, however, he discovered his real vocation in jiu-jitsu. That’s when he met professor Cícero Costha and joined his social project, Lutando Pelo Bem, in the Ipiranga neighborhood.
“He was always very dedicated. In the beginning, his father paid him a small monthly fee to train. Then we saw that he was so dedicated and wanted to be world champion, that we stopped charging to prepare him”, says Cícero The Sheet.
The teacher founded the project with the aim of offering disadvantaged young people a healthy alternative for training as citizens, promoting the integration of these young people through jiu-jitsu.
The fighter remained in Costha’s project until 2015, when he decided to found his own team with a group of friends, called “NS Brotherhood”.
Fighting for Good’s departure was not very friendly, according to the founding professor. “When he left, he tried to take a group [de lutadores] with him. Practically, everyone he tried to take. It got kind of weird. Either it was him or it was the people around him who wanted to do something parallel. But when we met him at events, we spoke to each other, greeted each other, but there was no dialogue.”
career and titles
In addition to being world champion eight times, in five different categories, Leandro Lo won eight Pan American championships in the sport.
Even before receiving the black belt, in 2010, the paulista participated in several championships. When he won his black belt, he won the title of Brazilian champion of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Confederation (CBJJ) and World Pro Abu Dhabi in the lightweight category.
In 2012, he won the Brazilian and Pan-American championships again, and won his first IBJJF (International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation) jiu-jitsu world title.
In 2014, he decided to compete in the middleweight category and continued to win world championships. In 2017, he changed categories again and went to fight as a heavyweight.
Leandro Lo would compete next Friday (12), in Austin, USA, another championship. In the early hours of Sunday, however, he was shot in the head during a concert by the Pixote group at Clube Sírio, in Indianópolis, in the South Zone of São Paulo, around 2 am.
The shooter would have been an off-duty military police officer identified by the police as Henrique Otavio Oliveira Velozo, 30 years old. The suspect’s preventive detention was requested.
The family’s lawyer Ivã Siqueira Junior says that, according to witnesses, the disagreement started after a man entered Lo’s circle of friends, took a bottle of drink and started shaking it. At the same time, the man would be facing the fighter, as a form of provocation.
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