When Jermall Charlo dips his head to step through the ropes inside NRG Arena on Saturday night, he’ll be about 15 miles from the Wal-Mart in southwest Houston where a 12-year-old Charlo sat outside with a jar, asking for donations so he and his twin brother Jermell could travel to their next amateur boxing tournament.

Now, 17 years later, he will drive to the arena in a new Mercedes or his classic 1982 Delorean to defend his World Boxing Council middleweight title and 28-0 record against Brandon Adams (21-2). But the ride from being a kid from Alief to a world champion wasn’t as smooth as the ones he has in his shiny sets of wheels. It’s the experiences he collected as a kid in Alief or earlier — and perhaps rougher — in Lafayette, La., before the family moved to southwest Houston, that got him here.

Those Louisiana days include times when his father, Kevin Charlo, an amateur boxer in his own right, had his twin sons fight kids on the street to become tough. When there were no more kids left to fight, the twins sometimes fought each other.

“Louisiana … that was the hard-knock life, you know?” Jermall said. “We grew up fighting. My dad would arrange a circle of competition and we’d have to fight. That isn’t the way you should raise a kid, but he saw it as teaching us at the time. And, hey, I’ve made it to this point and life is way better now.”

Fight Night Main event: Jermall Charlo (28-0) vs. Brandon Adams (21-2)

When: Saturday; first bout at 4:30 p.m., televised card starts at 8 p.m.

Where: NRG Arena

Tickets: $30-$250 (click here)

TV: Showtime

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Jermall says he and his brother got their physicality from their father, but the hard work that’s raved about by every trainer who has put the Charlos through the paces? That comes from their mother. Terrie Hinton moved the boys to Houston when they were 8 and immediately took on two jobs. She was a teacher during the day and took as many extra tutoring jobs as she could handle at night while caring for her sons.

With Missouri City rapper Travis Scott’s music playing over the speakers at Kinetix Fitness Center in Missouri City, Hinton looked on as her son trained last week.

“Have you seen how hard they work in the gym?” she said. “I tried to teach them that work ethic. I tried to teach them that you have to work for whatever you want. Nothing in this world is free. They didn’t grow up having a lot of things, but they knew everything they did have was earned through hard work.”

Jermall and Jermell put that lesson into action early in life. After moving to Houston, Kevin decided Savannah Boxing Club was a better place for his sons to learn boxing. Soon, the twins were bouncing around the gym at the same time as world champions such as Evander Holyfield, Raul Marquez and Jesus Chavez went through workouts at Savannah.

Besides their constant pleading for Ronnie Shields, who was working with the aforementioned titleholders, to help train them, no one says the twins were a bother. Instead, they impressed.

“At first you kind of noticed them back then because you were like, ‘Hey, the twins are back,’ and maybe you’d laugh,” Marquez said. “But they were there every day. That’s back in the day when Evander Holyfield was in the gym. I was in the gym. Other top fighters were in the gym, but you could still see these little kids’ work ethic. And, I’m telling you, it was every day. I always knew they would do something in boxing because of their discipline. They were unlike any other kids you see. They were focused.”

Shields, who trains Jermall and compares both twins’ work ethic to that of Holyfield, laughs at the days of two kids hounding him for special training.

“I used to tell them, ‘When you get ready to turn pro, I’ll train you,’ ” Shields said. “That’s when they were 10 years old. They were good and they worked hard, but they were 10. You never know what’s going to happen to a kid when they’re at that age, but they were persistent, I’ll give them that.”

Jermall, who graduated in the top 20 percent of his class at Alief Hastings and spent a year at the University of Houston, got his career off to a late start, not turning pro until a year after his brother. When Jermell was 17-0 and signed to Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, Jermall was 9-0 with no backing from a major promotional company. That’s when he took a page out of his Savannah Boxing Club playbook and decided he needed to get in someone’s ear.

Jermall, 22, didn’t have much money, but he had a friendship with former Texans defensive tackle Travis Johnson, who hooked him up with a buddy pass for a flight to California. He had that free flight and a plan: Get to Ontario, Calif., for the Andre Berto-Robert Guerrero fight where Jermell was fighting on the undercard, find promoter Al Haymon and convince him to sign him.

Charlo got into the fight with a ticket from his brother, then ducked past security — “I literally jumped over a railing,” Jermall says — and posed as his more well-known brother, Jermell, to get into a room with Haymon. Jermall was honest with Haymon, telling him he was Jermell’s brother, and fortuitously, the promoter had heard of Jermell’s twin.

“I was kind of speaking fast, but this was my big shot, so I just said, ‘I wanted to know if you could give me a chance and watch me fight and see if you want to sign me,’ ” Jermall said. “He asked if I could be ready in two weeks, and I said I was ready that night. He kind of put his hand on my shoulder and told me he could tell how serious I was about it, so he put me on a show in Anaheim two weeks later.”

It was like every cheesy switch-a-roo twin plotline in a movie, except this one worked.

An inspired Jermall pummeled Edgar Perez in that fight, forcing Perez’s corner to stop the beatdown after the fourth round. Two weeks later, Jermall received a contract from Haymon and went to work, fighting seven times in that first year in 2013 and cracking the top 10 for the first time by the end of the year. Now, Jermall has a world title and hopes to put on a big enough show in his hometown this weekend that other titleholders in his weight class such as Canelo Alvarez and Demetrius Andrade will fight him.

The strategy to get to the next step has always been the same regardless of whether Jermall was holding a title belt or a donation jar outside Wal-Mart: hustle and persistence. Jermall passes on that same message to his four sons he’s raising with wife, Shantel, his high school sweetheart.

“I tell everyone, kids, parents, anyone … stay focused and don’t quit,” Jermall said. “See how I take care of my mom? I buy my mom a house and car and stuff. She taught us what hard work is all about. Not just with her words, but with her actions. When she had to, she would take us to Wal-Mart to ask for money, so we could pursue our dream. That’s all about discipline and focus and belief. Look at us now.”

matt.young@chron.com

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