From his Strikeforce debut in December 2009 until December 2015, Souza fought thirteen times and lost just once in a decision against the Strikeforce champion, Luke Rockhold. Souza took eight of those fights after he met Rockhold and only one made it to the scorecards. After his UFC debut, Souza looked unstoppable—a wild beast set loose on a division of guys just there for sport—and then in December of 2015 he met Yoel Romero.

Wrong Side of the Cards

The development of a fighter can be summed up in the thousands of hours that he spends on the mats, under the bar, and out pounding the pavement. Boiled down to the basics a fighter is built from rounds, pounds and miles. And that is why the fight game is so wicked: all of those hours of painstakingly gradual, grinding improvement to make the next week a little better can be overturned by split second happenings and coincidences.

On the small scale—Souza’s fight against Yoel Romero was won and lost on a chance back fist, thrown off a missed kick, that Souza ran onto in the first round and which Romero capitalized on. A split second chance in a fight in which almost nothing else had happened. Souza did enough to come back from that and win the second and third round on many fan and pundit scorecards, yet it was Romero who received the victory from the judges in a split decision.

One interesting note from that bout was Souza’s insistence on holding the half guard even as Romero opened his legs and practically begged Souza to pass. So much of Jacare’s best work has come from the top of side control of even knee-on-belly (he is one of the few to use it to any extent in MMA), yet he was so aware of the need to keep Romero controlled and not give him the chance to explode up to his base.

Ronaldo Souza also shows how fighters are victim to timing and coincidence on the larger scale over their career. He fell victim to the shake ups of the middleweight division. Perhaps if he had won on that judges decision against Romero he could have gotten the shot at the UFC belt that has always eluded him but his old foe, Rockhold lost the middleweight crown in a shocking upset to Michael Bisping (who came in as a replacement on short notice), and then Georges St. Pierre re-emerged on the scene to complicate things further. The Romero fight will probably be remembered as the watershed on Ronaldo Souza’s career, but Jacare went on to suffer a far more convincing and lopsided defeat against Robert Whittaker, and then found himself in barnburners against Kelvin Gastelum and Chris Weidman—taking serious lumps in both fights.

Starting Too Fast

So it seems like the Jacare experiment is nearing its conclusion. The early results were pretty incredible: his ideas in the cage, his style of passing, his pursuit of submissions from the top, and the discovery that he had knockout power were all indicators of possible greatness. Then there were touches of savvy even on the feet: he has always valued attacking the body and does so with a great front snap kick and heavy punches. However, at some point the pace of improvement slowed to a crawl and there are now large areas of Souza’s game that just aren’t where they need to be to beat the absolute best fighters in the sport. Let us open the can of worms that is Jacare’s takedown game.

One of the interesting comparisons in the middleweight division is that between the two genetic freaks of the class—Jacare and Romero. Romero is often likened to a big cat: always able to generate absurd power with a degree of grace, out of seemingly off balance positions. He is almost lethargic at many points in the cage, until he needs to pounce for a well timed double leg, hit a foot sweep, or leap into a majestic flying knee. Souza is far more wooden in his movement and obvious in his approach, but you could not find a more fitting nickname that ‘Jacare’, the crocodile. Souza’s shots are low and long and he will often grab onto just the end of a foot. Who shoots low singles in modern MMA? Shoot a takedown on any great counter wrestler and their goal will be to force you down their leg towards that low single which is a nightmare to hold with no shoes and sweaty bodies.

Souza’s shot is almost a wrestler’s impression of a jiu jitsu practitioner, exaggerated for comedic effect. He doesn’t change level and drive in, he flings himself to the floor at his opponent’s feet.