Photo courtesy of Leandro Higo

On Friday in Budapest, Hungary, Leandro Higo will challenge Bellator bantamweight champion Eduardo Dantas in front of a worldwide audience in the millions on Spike TV and around the world. It's a fighter's dream—the main event for a major promotion, the very definition of making it.

You'll excuse Higo if that doesn't quite feel true yet.

The fight game is all smoke and mirrors, illusions on top of deceptions, each misdirection shrouded in a golden haze and the promise of money. For Higo, the glamour is all there as promised. There are photo shoots, his face on a poster, attention every time he enters a room. Fans will scream as he and Dantas pit will against will, punches will land, someone will walk away the victor.

And, when it's all over, when the cameras turn off, fans go out into the night to relive the drama and promoters move on to the next fight, he'll return to the apartment in Natal, Brazil, he shares with three other men and a job that pays less than $100 a month. His wife and son will still be more than 150 miles away in Mossoro. The future he's dreamed of will still be just a wavy oasis on the horizon.

"Sometimes I ask myself if it's really worth it," Higo told Bleacher Report through a translator. "I gave up of several years of my life, I had to be away from my son through lots of parts of his life, my wife, my family, left my city. Leaving my family and my city to pursue my dream was the hardest thing. To give up on what you love to get into a lion's den. But I saw that was the moment to take a step forward and get closer to giving them a better life."

It's this dream of a better life that has kept him moving forward as the MMA treadmill has increased its pace to keep him standing in place. Even the explosion of popularity that followed the UFC's debut on Globo TV in Brazil did little to hasten Higo's rise.

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"With the UFC doing so many shows and so many cards needing to be filled, Brazilian fighters started ducking him," manager Matheus Aquino said. "This went on for almost two years. He had seven fights canceled, five of them on fight week or fight day."

Higo (17-2) has been considered one of the sport's top prospects since 2012, but a series of unfortunate events, everything from injuries to visa to immigration disasters, have prevented him from ever showcasing his talent on the big stage.

"Things took too long to happen for him and it was very frustrating and even infuriating to see," training partner and friend Patricky "Pitbull" Freire said. "He's the hardest-working and most dedicated fighter I know. He should have gotten an opportunity in a major organization for years now. ... No one deserves it more. He shouldn't have to go through half of the things he did as a fighter, let alone as a person. But the fact he's here now speaks volumes about his dedication and strength."

There are thousands of Leandro Higos who never make it even this far. The odds, after all, are stacked high against someone ever escaping the kind of desperate poverty he faced. After his father was electrocuted just days before his birth, trying to earn extra money to support his new son, the Higo family struggled. As a kid his mother often went hungry to allow Higo and his sisters to eat. It's what drives him to push on, to help his own son catapult out of a system seemingly designed for him to fail.

"I come from a poor family and didn't have structure to invest on my training" he said. "There are several would-be champions in Brazil that stop due to lack of support, especially in my region."

Photo courtesy of Leandro Higo

Little things help—a sponsorship here and there, a bit of money from UFC fighter Bethe Correia after he helped train her for a fight with Jessica Eye. But even today, on the eve of his breakout moment, economics affects everything.

Almost all of his potential Bellator opponents, from former champion Joe Warren to Dantas, have resources he can't match—specialists and supplements that cost more than Higo makes in months. He's never made more than $4,000 for a fight—and even that purse required him to make his own travel arrangements.

"Some guys live to train, can hire every professional they need, supplementation, sponsorships and all that," Higo said. "And here I have my team's full support, but I still can't afford as much dedication because I teach classes to help pay the bills. It helps very little, and I'm still missing some of the things other top fighters have."

Higo could have quit a million times. He almost did, over and over again. When he couldn't afford a gi to practice jiu-jitsu as a kid. When, still a teenager, his own son was born and he suddenly had a family to support. When, despite a name that drew shivers in Brazil, he still couldn't find a way into the MMA mainstream, fracturing his relationship with his wife and forcing him to part from his son.

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But something kept him going, that spark that distinguishes an athlete with promise from a fighter. Higo is a fighter. It's why, when Aquino and the late Bruno Gouvea, the Freire brothers' mentor, went to see the young prospect for the first time they found him training by himself, beating regional competition with his wits and will alone.

"At most there was someone to hold pads for him," Aquino remembered. "The team there was more focused on jiu-jitsu or just didn't take the MMA practices seriously. He'd tied mitts at pillars to hit when there wasn't anyone to hold it for him."

In Higo, the two men saw a reflection of the Pitbull brothers, future Bellator stars who were just coming into their own as fighters. Ironically, Higo had already earned that nickname for himself due to his dogged pursuit of submissions anytime he hit the mat.

"Watch me and my brother fighting, and that's Leandro. He's complete, he's aggressive, he has finishing skills and instinct," said Patricio "Pitbull" Freire, a former Bellator featherweight champion. "When he wants something nothing stops him. Everything that I see for his future has the color of gold."

Aquino and Gouvea saw so much in Higo that day in 2012 that they invited him back to Natal, offering him a place to live and train. A month later, Gouvea was dead, victim of a tragic car accident on his birthday.

"Bruno was the person that opened the doors of the team to me," Higo said. "Brought me to live in his place. Believed in me and treated me really well the first day we met. After he died, Patricio kind of adopted me. I can't really put into words how much this means."

Gouvea promised Higo that if he came with him to Natal, he would one day be world champion. That won't happen in Budapest. Because he took this fight on short notice, trading a normal training camp for the kind of opportunity that has been all too scarce, Higo missed weight for the bout, making it a non-title fight. He won't return with the championship win or lose, won't present it to his son Mateus as he planned.

But, in some ways, this fight is about more than championship gold. It's about opportunity, a chance to enter a brand new socio-economic class and bring his family, separated by circumstance, back together.

"When I think of where I'm headed and that through this I'll be able to provide them a healthy and happy life, I know it's worth it," Higo said. "I don't know how I could provide them that if it wasn't through this. It will all start with this fight. After this win, my life will change and I will have my family back with me for good."

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.