Not many people get to retire on top. And Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza certainly isn’t. Souza announced his retirement last week after closing out his stellar career with four straight defeats, including having his arm broken by Andre Muniz in his final fight. Time comes for us all, even for one of the greatest grapplers the sport of MMA has ever known.
But don’t let the end make you forget about the peak. Souza is a legend, a transcendental talent and one of the most remarkable athletes in the history of combat sports, having excelled at the highest level at two different pursuits. Although Brazilian jiu-jitsu has been a building block of MMA since the sport’s inception, it’s been quite difficult for real world-class BJJ competitors to transition to MMA and have high-level success – Souza is an exception.
Jacare is one of the greatest BJJ competitors to ever successfully jump to MMA, having won two ADCC titles and a host of other world championship golds before and during his MMA career. He’ll also go down as perhaps the best middleweight ever to somehow never fight for a UFC title, although he spent most of his career ranked in the top five and came close on numerous occasions.
As a grappler, he was a deity, already considered one of the greatest of all time before he was out of his 20s. What set him apart was uncommon physical strength, aggressive and dynamic style on the mat, and legendary toughness – in his most famous victory, at the 2004 world championships, he battled on to win a decision even after the great Roger Gracie broke his arm midway through the match.
Jacare moved full-time to MMA two years later, and found almost immediate success. Not only was he a legendary grappler, Jacare discovered that he could scrap on the feet as well, and had significant knockout power. Although many elite BJJ artists who come into MMA are swiftly exposed as one-trick ponies, that never happened with Jacare. The thump in his fists was real – he could do stuff like, for instance, knocking a bad dude like Derek Brunson silly with a backpedaling hook.
If anything, Jacare fell in love with the striking a little too much at times, to the exclusion of the grappling that made him an all-timer. That still didn’t stop him from being one of the best middleweights in the world for the better part of a decade. By the time he signed with the UFC in 2013, he had already been a world champion – he won Strikeforce’s title in 2010, a belt that, considering the amazing level of talent that passed through that organization, should be considered on par with a UFC belt.
Souza won the belt off Tim Kennedy (a cringeworthy douchebag, but a top fighter in his time), successfully defended it against Robbie Lawler (future UFC champion, violence icon) and lost it to Luke Rockhold (future UFC champion, also kind of a cringeworthy douchebag). These were the kinds of fighters that Souza was contending with, and usually beating, before entering the Octagon. His success continued in the UFC, but he was perennially snakebit – he always somehow ended up just short of a world title shot.
No one was hurt worse by Michael Bisping‘s title run than Jacare. While Bisping elected to defend his title against a decrepit Dan Henderson and Georges St-Pierre fresh off a four-year retirement, Jacare – who seemed like one of the clear and obvious choices for a title chance – was left out in the cold.
Even worse, Jacare came up on the wrong end of a couple extremely contested decisions in crucial fights. In Dec. 2015, Jacare lost a split decision to Yoel Romero that the majority of media outlets scored for Souza – had he won, it would have been his sixth straight win since moving to the UFC, and would have made him just about undeniable. And in May 2018, he lost a split decision to Kelvin Gastelum that was about as close as you can get. Gastelum’s next fight was the epic with Israel Adesanya, with an interim title on the line.
It’s a real dire shame that Jacare never got the shine that he truly deserved, and uneducated fans – which are the overwhelming majority of the idiots who watch MMA – won’t count his successes in Strikeforce the same way they would had they occurred in a UFC Octagon. But it needs to be acknowledged how much of a freak of nature Souza was, to be so great at two different sports – sports with a skillset that overlaps somewhat in between them, but not all the way. I’m not calling him Bo Jackson or anything, but he’s something not ridiculously far off.
It may be a very long time until we see another fighter like Ronaldo Souza, especially coming from the BJJ world. And as he finally returns to the sport that put him on the map, it’s a big loss for MMA. He’s an all-time great, in every sense of the term.
The Big Fight 