Arnold Classic Brazil 2022 - the winner was narrowly defeated by home team Rafael Brandao!

The richest and largest city in Latin America, the richest and largest city in the entire southern hemisphere, the seventh largest metropolis in the world, and last but not least, the largest city in Brazil. Sao Paulo is all of these, and on Saturday, April 30, it hosted another edition of the Arnold Classic Brazil, where fighters from Jim Manion's IFBB Professional League compared their phases.

A total of 13 fighters took part in the competition, which was last held in 2019 after the previous two editions did not take place due to the worldwide pandemic of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Unfortunately, however, not everyone got the opportunity to compete. Due to the language barrier and schedule irregularities, two fighters missed the semi-final bouts.

One of them was Arash Eskandari from Iran, who came on stage only after the first semi-final call-up. The judges allowed him a very quick individual posing, and then included him in the second call-up. He was thus able to continue in the competition.

Sibusiso Kotelo from South Africa will have a completely different memory of the Brazilian competition. He did not even appear on stage until after the last semi-final invocation. He thought that the competition was in the evening. Unfortunately, this was not the case and he was denied further participation in the competition. The only thing the judges allowed him to do was to appear on stage during the final bouts as a guest with an exhibition performance.

Sibusiso Kotelo

As far as the semifinal fights as such are concerned, the biggest favourite of the competition was the local fighter Rafael Brandao, who managed to score his first professional victory in mid-November last year when he dominated the Wings of Strength Romania Muscle Fest Pro 2021, which also secured his direct participation in this year's Mr. Olympia.

It was no surprise that Rafael appeared immediately in the first semi-final comparison. In it, Vitor Hugo Boff, Thiago Lins, William Martins and Emir Omeragic stood next to him at the request of the judges.

If anyone expected Rafael to be in the middle of the line during the posing, which is usually a sign that the judges see him as the favourite, they would be mistaken! This position was occupied by Vitor Hugo Boff, who was making his professional debut!

The same privilege was given to Boff during the last semi-final comparison, in which he fought against the pair of Rafael Brandao and Thiago Lins. The semi-final fights were full of surprises, so there was nothing to do but wait for the final fights, after which everything was already clear.

In the end, it was the home fighter Rafael Brandao who could really enjoy the victory, but he really had it by the skin of his teeth! After the semi-final he was still one point behind Boff, whom he managed to beat in the final.
In his favour were slightly better quadriceps, wider back muscles, and an excellent non-muscular pose.

The second place in his professional debut was taken by Vitor Hugo Boff, who especially for the semi-final part of the competition prepared better form than Brandao.
His other great asset was the fullness, roundness and separation of his upper body muscles, which made him dominate in almost all the leading poses!

If these two fighters had swapped their positions within the results list, surely no one would have had the slightest objection. The balance was truly unprecedented!

Third place was earned by Thiago Lins. He dominated the entire starting field in two factors. Firstly, he was absolutely the best prepared rider on the podium, but secondly, he was also the absolute ugliest! During his preparations, he had a number of different injuries that took a pretty bad toll on his aesthetics. No other bodybuilder in the world has so many visible defects of the muscular corpus!

Fourth place was won by William Martins, then Emir Omeragic made it into the Top 5.

Results:

1. Rafael Brandao
2. Vitor Hugo Boff
3. Thiago Lins
4. William Martins
5. Emir Omeragic
6. Alan Bonadiman
7. Marcelo Cruz

8. Jefferson Santos
9. Eduardo Rodriguez
10. Iman Rezaei
11. Junior Javorski
12. Arash Eskandari
-. Sibusiso Kotelo

1. Rafael Brandao

2. Vitor Hugo Boff

3. Thiago Lins

Other competitors

More photos can be found HERE, on the server www.npcnewsonline.com.

Source:
www.ifbbpro.com
www.npcnewsonline.com