Jacare Cavalcanti

Titles & Awards:

* Founder of the Alliance jiu jitsu team.

* OTM 2008 Instructor of the year.

About Me:

Romero "Jacaré" Cavalcanti (born October 17, 1952), a practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is the founder and head coach of the prestigious Alliance Jiu-Jitsu Team. He is one of the six people (most commonly known as the "Famous Five") to have been promoted to Black Belt by the famous Rolls Gracie prior to his death in a hang gliding accident. Romero has coached many of today's top Black belt competitors and black belt coaches.

Romero began training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at 11 years old. By the age of 16, Romero regularly attended jiu jitsu classes at the famous Gracie School in Copacabana where he grew up, alongside Carlos Gracie, Jr., Crolin Gracie, Fábio Santos, Mauricio Motta Gomes, the Machados, and Rickson Gracie. After extensive competition from 1972 to 1985 and working as an assistant instructor at the Gracie school, Romero opened his first school in Ipanema, Brazil. Romero had studied in New York in the 1970s, and in 1995 he moved back to the US with his family and opened a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school in Miami. He later moved to Atlanta where he established a school in late 1996.

Romero Cavalcanti's nick name "Jacaré" means alligator in Portuguese.