"My friend," the man said to me, "have you ever done any martial arts?"

"I boxed a little," I told him. "Why?"

"Because," he said, "my family has been doing Jiu-Jitsu for sixty-five years. We're champions. We're very well known in Brazil. Why don't you come by for a free class?"

It was 1979, and my life was on the fast track to nowhere. I was stuck in a rut, stuck in a job I didn't like in an industry I couldn't stand, numbing my frustrations with a steady diet of drugs and distractions. I desperately wanted a change: I wanted to do something meaningful with my life, something I felt excited and passionate about, but I had no idea what that "something" would be. And, at almost thirty years old, I was nursing a growing sense that things were never going to get any better: that my life was going to be this way forever, and that was just the way things went.

I didn't know anything about Jiu-Jitsu—all I knew about martial arts was what I'd seen in Kung Fu with David Carradine and in Bruce Lee's movies—but what did I have to lose? I figured I'd throw a few punches and kicks, maybe jump around while shouting, "Hi-ya!" What I found instead was a martial art unlike anything I'd seen on the big screen: a martial art that was methodical, subtle, and undeniably effective. I was deeply impressed, instantly hooked, and immediately convinced that this Brazilian style of Jiu-Jitsu was going to take the world by storm.

As it would turn out, though, it would take over a decade's worth of dedicated trying and the creation of a whole new sport for the martial arts world to open its eyes to what was staring it in the face. By then, though, they wouldn't be the only ones to see the light: by then the whole world had learned the named Gracie.

Standing there with the man and considering his invitation, I couldn't have imagined any of this. I couldn't have imagined that this moment would mark the beginning of the change I was looking for: that it would mark the beginning of my becoming a part of something incredible, something so much bigger than myself, something that would fundamentally alter the world of martial arts and combat sports forever.

I couldn't have imagined it then, but that moment would mark the beginning of the rest of my life.

This is the story of how the Gracie family and their style of Jiu-Jitsu first found their footing on American soil, and how they transformed not only the world of martial arts and combat sports but my life as well...