Rorion Gracie

Rorion Gracie is the oldest son of Helio Gracie. Helio, and his oldest sibling, Carlos Gracie, had helped spread the family's reputation in their native Brazil with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), a ground-based martial art they successfully modified from Japanese jujutsu. Helio taught his children, and, with Carlos, the Gracie family members would challenge practitioners of other martial arts with "The Gracie Challenge", and often won. At age seventeen in December 1969, Rorion Gracie traveled to the United States for the first time on vacation, and for a year he toured New York, Los Angeles, and Hawaii. Gracie had kept cash and return trip airline tickets at a YMCA in Hollywood, California. When his money and airline tickets were stolen, he worked in a restaurant, and later at a construction site where he would often sleep. When he became destitute, he begged for money on the streets until he was able to return to Brazil in 1970. He spent five years studying law at the Federal University o