Forget about rivalries between celebrities on this season of 'Dancing With the Stars' -- there's definitely a sense of competition between Maksim Chmerkovskiy and his kid brother Val, who's one of the show's new pro dancers.

Val showed that the gloves (or rather the shirts) are off when he made his entrance on last night's premiere by descending the stairs bare-chested.

Prior to dancing the cha-cha with his celebrity partner, model/TV host Elisabetta Canalis, Val said that he'd given his brother ten seasons to win the mirrorball trophy, but that since he hasn't taken it home, well, Val was just going to have to do it himself. (Ouch!)

Is this just some brotherly banter to rile up the audience or is Val trying to dethrone Maks as the "bad boy of the ballroom?"

"None of it is serious," Val assured AOL TV on the post-show press line. "We're both very passionate and competitive, but our passion is focused more on supporting each other and making sure that as a unit, as a family, we go forward and succeed. Everybody else is our competition."

Maks and partner Hope Solo, a pro soccer player, scored an impressive 21 points for their Viennese Waltz compared to Val and Elisabetta's 15 for their cha-cha.

While tapping into a faux rivalry may make for good television, Maks says that his brother deserves to be on the show as a pro dancer in his own right.

"I'll jump in every once in a while and tell him a few things, but only if he wants to know," Maks says of coaching his sibling. "I want this to be his journey, his own experience. If someone hands everything to him on a plate it can ruin it. He's worked hard to get where he's gotten. He earned it on his own."

Maks is six years Val's senior, but he says it feels more like only six weeks given Val's impressive performance in the premiere. "I'm absolutely proud of how he did. He's made the hardest move for a true professional dancer to transition onto a stage this big with this many people."

Val says that he and his brother have always been close.

"We're very similar in a lot of ways, but we're very different, too," Val says. "We try to avoid trouble, but if it came our way we took care of it."

There may be a bit of a language barrier between Val and Elisabetta, but Canalis has no problem interpreting the dynamic between the two brothers. "They're having fun," she says. "They love each other. They really love each other."

'Dancing With the Stars' Season 13 airs Mondays and Tuesdays, 8PM ET on ABC.