Miguel Pupo has had a long road to where he’s at, and now that he’s there, he’s going to enjoy it. Photo: WSL
Miguel Pupo has won two events this season. He’s fourth in the world. At 34, he’s having the kind of year that’s put a world title on his mind for the first time.
Still, after a month and a half on the road bouncing between airport lounges and rental houses, all he wanted when landing back in Brazil was to sleep in his own bed, watch some TV, and do nothing for a while.
“At my age, if you get the wrong bed in the wrong place, it can ruin the whole trip,” Pupo joked. But there’s more to it than just a bad mattress. Pupo has four young daughters and a wife at home, and family life keeps moving while he spends most of the year chasing waves across the globe.
Coming home with another trophy certainly helps. “It’s a feeling of mission accomplished,” he told The Inertia. “Just lying on your couch, lying in your bed and resting, not doing anything, watching TV…”
He didn’t stay still for long. He surfed the next day and was back training that afternoon, but returning home felt different this time. Coming off a win at Trestles, his second victory of the year, Pupo remains comfortably near the top of the rankings after nine events. It has put him right back into a conversation that once felt completely out of reach.
Just a few years ago, he wasn’t thinking about world titles. He was wondering if he even had a career left.
When Everything Clicked
Pupo has been on the Championship Tour since 2011, and those years have taken a toll on his body: surgery, injuries, and the kind of wear and tear inherent in elite competition. Staying healthy this season has changed everything. “I’m not young anymore,” Pupo said. “Feeling good is almost 70 percent of my confidence.”
Winning at both Bells Beach and Trestles reinforced a feeling he hadn’t experienced in years: that he belongs at the top. “I think this season I finally started to feel like I did in 2022 again,” he said.
That was the year Pupo found what he thought was a winning formula. He won his first CT event at Teahupo’o and finished sixth in the world, just a handful of points short of qualifying for the WSL Finals. Then came the ankle injury.
The following seasons became a matter of recovering; managing his body and trying to find his rhythm again. In 2023, he underwent surgery. In 2024 and 2025, more injuries kept getting in the way. This time, Pupo doesn’t think there was any secret to it – his body simply gave him a chance. “I think it’s more the effect of my body being healthy,” he noted. “That helped a lot.”
But there is another part of it, too. Pupo has become more comfortable with where he is in his career. He doesn’t worry as much anymore about where he thinks he should be. It took him years to get there.
When He Felt Retired
At 27, Pupo was still competing on the biggest stage in surfing. He was also starting to feel like the sport had moved on without him. He had lost his main sponsor and began approaching companies looking for support. Nobody seemed interested.
“I was at the biggest showcase in the world, still at a good age to do a lot of things in the sport, and I knocked on companies’ doors, and nobody opened,” he recalled. “So I felt retired.”
It hit harder because Pupo had started to associate his identity with what was stuck to the nose of his board.
In 2018, while competing on the CT and QS at the same time, he was making so little from sponsorship that his wife was the one keeping the household afloat. It was one of the hardest years of his career, but it also forced him to figure out something he says he needed to learn much earlier.
“I thought the sticker on the nose was validation,” Pupo said. “It was a process for me to learn that I’m not what’s on my board. I’m me.”
He eventually rebuilt his career around himself rather than around the logos on his equipment. Support came back, his results improved. In 2022, he won at Teahupo’o and looked like he had found his place at the top of the sport again – and today, he’s backed by Mormaii, one of Brazil’s biggest surf brands.
Lower Trestles fits Miguel’s surfing, obviously. Photo: WSL
Learning How to Enjoy It
A big part of that mental change has come from his work with former world champion Adriano de Souza. De Souza has been working with Pupo for the past five years, including during that 2022 season. This year, ADS has also been splitting his time between Pupo and Gabriel Medina, who is a childhood friend of Pupo’s.
For Pupo, the relationship with Adriano has evolved with time. ADS has lived through every version of the pressure Pupo is now facing: staying on tour, leading a ranking, winning events, and eventually becoming world champion. Pupo says the work has become less about constant instruction and more about knowing when to speak.
“He knows when to come in and talk, when to leave, when to let me be quiet, when to push me,” Pupo said.
They also laugh a lot.
“We’ve had more fun than pressure, I think that’s the coolest part,” Pupo said. “We’ve laughed a lot, enjoyed our days together, and that reflects in the water. The mind and body are one thing, so if my mind is light, if I’m calm, it reflects in the water.”
But that doesn’t mean the pressure is gone – it’s just different. A few years ago, Pupo was worried about keeping his place on tour. Now he is trying to hold on to a place near the top of the rankings. He has already worn the yellow jersey this season. With the regular season over, he’s heading into the final stretch in fourth place, inside the top five.
For the first time in a while, the world title feels like something he can actually chase. “Winning two events is surreal,” he said. “I hope to stay even closer in that fight all the way to Pipe.”
He’s careful not to get too far ahead of himself. Portugal comes next, then the Philippines, where Cloud 9 will host one of the biggest remaining tests of the season.
Pupo has never even been there. “For me, being goofy, nothing has changed,” he said. “The CT is very difficult for goofy surfers, but we’re used to challenges.”
He knows Cloud 9 will be new territory for almost everyone, he just hopes to arrive with a little room for error. “I hope to get there with a little bit of cushion to burn, so I can have the peace of mind to compete in a wave like that.”
For now, he’s enjoying the time at home with his wife and four daughters. Then it’s back to work, with a world title now in sight.
