I met Ronaldo in 2010 when I was training with Atos in Rio Claro. This was at the height of training there. Ramon Lemos had left to train Anderson Silva at this time, but the morning trained was: Rafa and Gui Mendes, Bruno Frazatto, Duringo, Ary Farias, Guto Campos, Ed Ramos, plus the up and coming lower belts, like Denilson Bischiliari, Ronaldo and others. It was a true murderers row. We were both purple belts, about the same size and he spoke a little English so we got along very well. Every time we trained, he beat me by a little more each time. It was hard to close the gap, even as I got to know his game better. He adapted to mine better than I did to his, but it made for great training.
He was competing very successfully in Brazil at the time and had beaten the top purple belts multiple time. Bruno Pucci, Rafael Mansur, Matteus Luckman, etc. when I left Brazil, he finally got the chance to fight in the big tournaments in California. The only match I ever saw him lose from purple to brown belt was the finals of the World Championships at brown belt, where he took silver, and having trained with both Ronaldo and the guy he fought, it was some kind of fluke, and to this day I don't know how he dropped that one.
When he got his black belt, he decided to shift his focus to MMA. A lot of the Atos guys opened gyms in the US and Ronaldo left Atos to train at Nova Uniao in Rio, where he has gone 6-0, all wins by submission. I didn't watch the Claudia vs. Joanna season of TUF, but Ronaldo was one of the grappling coaches for Claudia, so you may recognize him from there.
Anyways, heads up, he is a great person and an excellent fighter. I'm very excited to see him get this opportunity. Also, he used to put on Celine Dion during training. 
In. Hope he does well. 
Typed this post from my phone after I saw Ronaldo post the cast photo on Facebook, and just butchered the spelling of everything. Pretty sure Durinho would smack me if I called him Duringo. Haha
kennyfrommd - Typed this post from my phone after I saw Ronaldo post the cast photo on Facebook, and just butchered the spelling of everything. Pretty sure Durinho would smack me if I called him Duringo. HahaHe'd only be offended if you said Ronda has fat arms