UFC’s shoddy treatment of Jacare is no secret. The 37 year old jiu-jitsu god has had a tough time getting a title shot in the middleweight division.

His MMA record stands at 24 victories and 4 losses with a streak of two victories – against Tim Boetsch and Vitor Belfort. They followed a decision loss to Yoel Romero.

Jacare: ‘I’d Make As Much Money Teaching BJJ As I Do Fighting in the UFC’

Jacare made his MMA debut 12 years ago against Macaco in Jungle fight.

About his MMA debut against Macaco in Jungle fight in 2005, which he lost by tko:

“‘Macaco’ was really tough, he’s still winning fights today. He had fought 25 MMA fights and it was my debut, man. I was stupid enough to fight him, but I learned a lot with that. I realized that MMA was different from jiu-jitsu.”

“I always knew I needed to leave jiu-jitsu to focus on MMA and I heard a lot of critics from the jiu-jitsu practitioners. But today they know that you wasted a lot of time trying to do both.”

But now his contract with the UFC seems to be at the very end and with the way he’s been treated in addition to the ever shrinking roster, Jacare might be better off looking for a fight elsewhere. Still he hasn’t given up on reaching an agreement with the UFC just yet:

“We’ve been going back and forth (with UFC officials) for a while,” Souza’s manager Gilberto Faria told MMA Fighting. “We still have not reached an agreement on his value, but we will continue to talk after the fight. Our goal is to reach a new agreement shortly. The UFC middleweight belt is Jacare’s goal. With a good contract in place, we will keep fighting the best middleweight talents out there and earn the title shot.

“‘Jacare’ is the only guy out there who’s been vocal about fighting either Luke Rockhold or Yoel Romero. Nobody else is looking for this level of trouble, especially current UFC middleweight paper champion Michael Bisping. ‘Jacare’ has a tough challenge ahead of him (against Whittaker on Saturday) and this fight is what matters now.”

Jacare came under a bit of fire lately for publicly criticizing the UFC matching Michael Bisping and Georges St-Pierre:

“I want them to suffer a double knockout,” Souza said last month. “I want them to f*ck themselves, man. That’s the reality. I don’t care about this fight. That’s the same thing I said when Bisping fought Dan Henderson. I didn’t care, too. I won’t even watch this crap.”