Background
Born into a poor family, dos Santos was raised by a single mother. In order to help his family, he started to work at the age of 10. Dos Santos was 19 years old when he first met his future wife, Vilsana Picolli, in a restaurant where he worked as a waiter. His first serious contact with martial arts only happened when he was 21 years old, when Cigano started to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under Yuri Carlton. After only six months of training, he won a few Jiu Jitsu tournaments in Salvador. Dos Santos was soon invited to join an MMA practice, where he met his boxing coach Luiz Carlos Dórea, and roughly a year after he started training jiu jitsu, he made his debut professional fight.
Read more about this topic: Junior Dos Santos
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