Caio Borralho walked into his win over Reinier de Ridder at UFC 326 carrying a broken rib, and the UFC had no idea how bad it was. Neither did his parents.
The Brazilian middleweight laid it out in an interview with Stake, the betting brand he works with as an ambassador, as reported by Bloody Elbow. “I broke my rib two weeks before my fight with De Ridder. I fought with a totally broken rib,” Borralho said. He called the stretch between the injury and fight night “the craziest two weeks of my life,” adding, “It was a mental war.”
He got his hand raised in Las Vegas anyway. Then the real trouble started. Borralho said his doctor initially told him to let the rib heal on its own, but after 10 weeks the pain hadn’t gone away. He went back, got an MRI, and learned the break had separated even further. Surgery came the very next day.
Asked whether the promotion knew how serious the injury was before he fought, Borralho said no. His four coaches, his wider team and his wife were in on it. His mother and father were kept out of the loop on purpose. “Fighting is already a lot of worry for them, so I didn’t want them to worry more than needed, and I fought, and won!” he said.
How he got here
For a while Borralho looked like he was on an express lane to a middleweight title shot. He won his first seven fights in the UFC, the last of those over former title challenger Jared Cannonier. Then Nassourdine Imavov beat him in Paris 14 months ago, and the momentum stalled.
The De Ridder win this year got him moving again, but the rib recovery knocked him off UFC 330 in August, where he’d been booked against Joe Pyfer. So the fight that put him back in the mix also cost him his next one.
Now he’s back on a stacked card. Borralho faces Yousri Belgaroui at UFC 334 inside Madison Square Garden, third fight on the main card. Ciryl Gane defends the heavyweight title against Josh Hokit in the main event, and Kayla Harrison welcomes Amanda Nunes back to the Octagon on the same night. Belgaroui is 3-0 in the UFC and spent his kickboxing career as a three-time Glory title challenger. Borralho, healthy this time, is predicting a much better performance than the one he gave on a cracked rib.
Quick take
I’m torn on the secrecy. Beating a grappler as dangerous as De Ridder while protecting a broken rib for 15 minutes is absurd, and it reframes that win completely. It also turned into a surgery and a lost booking, which is the bill that comes due when nobody official knows what’s wrong. The matchup itself gets spicier with this news public. Belgaroui came up through Glory facing world-class strikers, and a kickboxer of that pedigree knows exactly where a liver shot and a body kick land. If that rib is fully healed after the surgery, Borralho gets to show what a full-strength “The Natural” looks like against a striker who has never lost in the Octagon. We find out Nov. 14 at the Garden.
