Gabriel Bonfim and Ismael Bonfim are two promising talents in the UFC welterweight and lightweight divisions. It was all possible thanks to another member of the family.

The story began in 1996, when Orlando Bonfim and Agripina Bonfim moved from Bahia to Sao Sebastiao looking for a better life. Odair Bonfim, the firstborn—who would eventually have 11 siblings, including Gabriel and Ismael—noticed something odd coming from the backyard: the neighbor used his house as a karate gym, and Odair was curious to see more of that. The 10-year-old literally opened a hold on the wall to peak the class, and fell in love with combat sports.

Odair insisted he wanted to take classes, but the family wouldn’t be able to provide much. Orlando agree to pay for the first month, and that was it. When it was time to renew the membership, Odair decided to walk around the town collecting aluminum cans and other types of metals and junk to sell at the local scrapyard, and use the money to pay for the karate classes.

Years passed, and Odair was now a 17-year-old black belt in both karate and kickboxing. The Bonfim clan was now complete with 12 children, but missing an important part when Orlando abandoned the family during his battle against alcohol. Gabriel and Ismael were still very young and Agripina was always busy taking care of so many kids, so Odair and one sister had to get jobs to put food on the table.

“I was teaching in a gym and working as a security guard at night on the weekends,” Odair told MMA Fighting. “I got other jobs here and there because there were a lot of people to feed. My father left a large group when he left, right? My sister and I worked day and night, but always confident we would get it done. It wasn’t a weight on the shoulder for us, it was a matter of honor. We couldn’t leave the kids with no breakfast, lunch and dinner. There was no luxury, it was always a battle. It was select meat and it wasn’t good [laughs], but we kept working, battling and winning.”

Odair, known as “Samuray” in the area, realized he would make more money if he had his own gym. Money was a problem, and there was no way he could rent a place to build a gym, so he simply tore down walls on their own house to open space for gym equipment. On top of that, he went do school to become a certified gym instructor.

“The place was packed, and I had no idea where that was taking us and how important that would be today,” said the 51-year-old Odair. “I started to break the walls of the house and my mother got mad. ‘You’re destroying the house,’ she said. And I responded, ‘We’ll buy another one later, let’s keep breaking this one.’ That’s when things started to get better. I struggled a lot, but managed to buy a [Volkswagen] Beetle that traded it for gym equipment. I knew that martial arts alone would be enough to provide to them, so I needed to have a gym too.”

Francisco Trinaldo, who would years later join the UFC through the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil reality show, was one of his first students of that improvised gym. Samuray said he graduated many kickboxers in the area before MMA went popular in Brasilia, but had to retire as a competitor after tearing his knee ligaments. That’s right on time when his brothers younger brothers Gabriel and Ismael got old enough to take fighting more seriously.

Ismael made his professional MMA debut in August 2011, days before UFC finally returned to Brazil after a 13-year hiatus for UFC 134 in Rio de Janeiro, and was 6-3 in the sport when Gabriel joined as a pro fighter in late 2014. The Bonfim brothers fought all over the country, making a name for themselves and winning 24 of 27 bouts combined until LFA offer them a shot.