The ‘Xiola’

The Xiola group was initially composed of nine members, of which were inseparable. They were always together during parties, birthdays, Christmas, and almost every other day; one way or another, they lived together.

The Xiola started at Colegio Nossa Senhora das Neves, in which all members ―with no exceptions― were in school. Everyone was older than Fábio by three to four years, which made them one to two years older than Gustavo Maguinho.

The original members and founders are Vladimir Mancha, Guilherme Vanim, Josebias Junior, George Boca (“Chefs”), Alysson Gomes, the twins Eduardo and Teofilo Reboucas, Fábio, and Gustavo Maguinho.

Maguinho had failed two years of school. He also played indoor soccer and studied with Fábio. The rest of the group were friends that were all in the same grade as Fábio, and Alysson, George Boca and Teofilo were in his class.

At that time, the Xiola didn’t exist yet and Fábio hadn’t started Jiu-Jitsu. One day, there was an argument in Colegio das Neves; it was common for boys to fight each other at the time. Since Fábio’s friend was participating in the feud, he went in to defend him and quickly became the center of the dispute, so they decided to meet the next day at a certain time to fight.

Fábio arrived to the scene of the fight with his friends; Gustavo Maguinho, Flavio Xingu, Marcelo Magao (In Memoriam), Mago Alisson galego, George Bomba, Arildo, and a few other boys. When one of his opponent’s friends saw just how big their group was, he called in his older brother to help them.

His opponent’s friend was Geovani (George Boca’s brother), better known as Boquinha. George Boca arrived at the scene accompanied by the rest of the Xiola members, who at that time didn’t know that they would eventually form a crew. Fábio already knew Alysson because he had gone to school with him, and the guys hadn’t come to fight, but instead, they came to make sure no one would jump in, leaving the fighting to the two.

It was during this incident that Fábio met Zebias. He was a big black guy who was almost 6.5”, played basketball, and was a lot older. When Zebias arrived at the scene, Fábio had thought: “We’re fucked, we’re going to get beat up now!”. But Zebias had just come for the show, he sharpened his knife in the sand and said, “You’re little Fábio, right? That guy over there sharpened his knife in the sand just like I did and said that it was your mom, then he spit on it!”

Fábio smiled in response, relieved that this guy hadn’t come to participate in the fight. Everyone was there and was waiting for the fight to begin, including the other students from the school. When his opponent finally appeared, he had passed right by, without noticing Fábio’s presence. So Fábio decided to take advantage of the situation and attacked from the back, without him knowing that the fight had begun.

Guilherme Vanim and Josebias thought that this was cowardly of him, and decided to stop the fight and restart it in order to be fair. Since his opponent practiced karate and Fábio practiced indoor soccer, each kicked using their own style.

Fábio got kicked in the stomach, and for this purpose, the karate kick is much more efficient than the soccer one; he fell in the sand beneath him. Since he had watched the movie Bloodsport starring Jean-Claude Van Damme recently, Fábio grabbed a handful of sand and threw it in his opponent’s face. Given his skewed vision, Fábio seized the moment and started hitting the guy while he clung onto Fábio’s waist. At that moment, Maguinho Xingu and the rest of the group jumped in and started hitting the guy as well, and in doing so, breaking their promise to keep the fight just between the two.

Guilherme Vanim arrived and shoved Maguinho while yelling at him. ‘Scrawny’ got scared given that Guilherme was older. The fight ended there, after which Fábio and Maguinho became closer and started hanging out together.

To this day, 20 years later, the Xiola continue to reunite. They message each other through their Whatsapp group and when Fábio goes to Brazil, they always get together and have lunch. When the group first started hanging out together, they still hadn’t come up with a name for themselves. During one of their parties’ ―after a lot of searching, even in dictionaries― Maguinho came up with Xiola. But no one knew what Xiola meant. So Maguinho replied: “I know what Xiola is, it’s a dick and two balls!”, just like that, it’s like, “two patty and one beers”. We now knew why he failed two years in school!!!