3) Vaudeville Fights lead to Inspiration

As Count Koma and other exhibition fighters made their way to Brazil they found a booming economy, ripe for making money and influencing the locals. Small Japanese enclaves exhisted and Maeda would have felt welcome here. In the state of Pará large theaters had opened to entertain the rubber plantation owners and workers. One of these was the American Theater, co-owned by Gastão Gracie. Gastão, of Scottish-Brazilian heritage, was the educated son of former slave owners who moved a vaudeville-like circus to the Amazon jungles in hopes of cashing in on the rubber boom.

Gastão opened the American Theater and hosted strong-man competitions, at times he even managed a fighter from Italy. Count Koma would arrive in Brazil in 1914 and became a larger than life celebrity on the fighting circuit.

Gastão's oldest son, Carlos, was wild and routinely got into fights with other street youths. This was not acceptable to his more aristocratic father. Carlos watched Count Koma as he defeated international stars in fighting at his father's theater. He studied his style and could see that yes, Count Koma was very strong, but his real technique was how he used his body and leverage to undermine even bigger opponents.