Roll Call No. 18 — Ronaldo 'Jacare' Souza: Champion in Two Worlds
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Roll Call · The 30 Greatest · No. 18
World and ADCC champion on the mat, then a world-title contender in the cage — a rare grappler who conquered both.
Career ledger: 2× IBJJF black-belt World Champion · ADCC champion (2005, -87 kg) · ADCC Hall of Fame (2024) · former Strikeforce Middleweight Champion and UFC title contender.
Ronaldo “Jacaré” Souza — the nickname means “alligator” — is one of the very few humans to reach the summit of both competitive jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts, and he did it with a submission game so heavy it felt like a trap door opening under his opponents. On the mat he was a two-time World Champion at black belt and the 2005 ADCC champion in the -87 kg division, where he also placed second in the absolute, losing only to the peerless Roger Gracie.
What set Jacaré apart as a grappler was pressure with menace. He passed guard like a landslide and attacked the moment he arrived, and his top game translated almost perfectly to the cage — a rare thing, since sport jiu-jitsu and MMA reward different instincts. Where many decorated grapplers struggled to transfer their art to fighting, Jacaré carried his straight through the fence.
His MMA career became one of the most respected of his era. He captured the Strikeforce Middleweight Championship and, in the UFC, spent years ranked among the best 185-pound fighters on earth, finishing a long list of elite opponents with the same suffocating top control and submissions that made him a terror in the gi. He never quite captured a UFC belt, but he was a perennial contender who beat former and future champions and remained dangerous deep into his forties.
In 2024 he was inducted into the ADCC Hall of Fame, a fitting recognition that, whatever he accomplished in the cage, his grappling pedigree stood on its own. He is a bridge figure — proof that the art the Gracies built to work in a real fight really does, when carried by someone with the skill and the will to apply it under the hardest possible conditions.
On a list mostly populated by pure sport competitors, Jacaré earns his place with breadth. A world champion, an ADCC champion, and a genuine mixed-martial-arts titleholder, he answered the oldest question in the sport — does this actually work in a fight? — with a decade of emphatic yeses. The alligator took his jiu-jitsu everywhere, and it bit just as hard in every arena.
Roll Call is The Jiu Jitsu Mindset’s 30-part series on the greatest to ever play the game. Records per IBJJF, ADCC, UFC, and public databases.