carlos was born in belém in 1902, the first of eight children. he was a mischievous, aggressive child, prone to getting involved in brawls and getting expelled from schools. when carlos was 15 years old, hoping to find a way for him to vent his aggression, his father gastao took him to a professional wrestling challenge hosted in the circus he owned, where carlos witnessed how the judoka mitsuyo maeda defeated a much bigger man. impressed by the feat, he started taking classes under maeda and his assistant jacyntho ferro, albeit for a short time, as his family moved to rio de janeiro for economic reasons. there gracie started working as a bouncer in his father's casino until a falling out among them, and after some other jobs he became a pupil of donato pires dos reis, a police hand-to-hand instructor and apprentice to maeda. under him, carlos had his first formal training, learning especially self-defense-oriented techniques.