The MMA return of jiu-jitsu legend Gabi Garcia is once again cancelled.
News of the cancellation comes in the wake of the tragic floods that have impacted Garcia’s hometown of Porto Alegre, Brazil, as well as hundreds of cities around the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Garcia was originally slated to face Barbara Nepomuceno at Centurion FC on April 25 in Sao Paulo, but the match was then moved to the May 18 card (also in Sao Paulo) due to unknown reasons. On Thursday, the promotion announced that the heavyweight championship main event was off because “it would not be morally right” to have Garcia compete with family members having been directly impacted by the tragedy.
The bout was to be a rematch between Garcia and Nepomuceno, with Garcia owning a first-round submission win over Nepomuceno when the two fought at RIZIN 14 back in 2018. Garcia improved to 6-0 in MMA, but has not competed in the sport since. She MMA Fighting she did not ask for the rematch to be cancelled or postponed.
“It wasn’t my choice but if it were, I would rather be human than be selfish and fight for a belt” Garcia said. “It wasn’t my call, it was the promotion’s decision. The promoter told me the fight was going to be postponed for a future card. My managers told me to keep training because the fight will happen soon. I couldn’t sleep when I found out on Wednesday that the fight was going to be cancelled. I felt terrible.”
“In my opinion, if I had won the fight, I wouldn’t celebrate the belt,” she continued. “That’s the only title I don’t have in my career and I want it really bad, but I wouldn’t celebrate it while my family is suffering and there are people dying in the South. Many childhood friends lost everything and are living in shelters. I see my cousins crying because they’ve lost everything. That could be an excuse not to fight. I think it would be OK for me to say I wouldn’t fight because my head isn’t right, but I don’t give excuses. Nobody knew at the time but I won my first ADCC four days after my brother died. If you fight and give excuses after a loss, you take the merit away from your opponent and I would never do this.
“I never talked to the [Centurion FC] promoter about this. I was using my social media to help the South. Things are worse than people think. I have friends that work for the police and they are sending me videos of people on roofs, asking for water and food, and they can’t save everybody. There’s so much going on in this tragedy and I wouldn’t be able to celebrate a victory. But as a fighter, I’ll always fight no matter what. I’m used to that already. I never asked to cancel the fight. I think the decision [to postpone the fight] was full of compassion towards me and the South. They’re being humans. I wouldn’t be able to put on the show I want for my comeback fight. That wouldn’t be good for me and for the promotion and the country. I would fight, but I wouldn’t celebrate it.”
Garcia added she doesn’t like Nepomuceno and hopes to reschedule the fight “as soon as possible”, and doubled down on her promise to not take the kickboxer down. Instead, Garcia wants to showcase her striking skills and score a knockout in front of the Sao Paulo crowd after battling recent personal adversity.
“I went through difficult times and depression,” Garcia said. “I didn’t get out of bed or talked to anyone for seven months. My mom stayed here with me for some time and I even thought of the worse, I thought about taking my own life after being scammed by my husband, who I’m currently battling in court here in the United States. If people knew what I went through and what I’m still going through…
“My godfather, who raised me, was in terrible health condition after a surgery that went wrong, and we prayed that he would open his eyes, move his hand. I was thinking, ‘I can’t lay in bed being healthy while others are fighting to live.’ I went back to training and it was miserable at first. I was out of shape, my body was sore. I did well on the third day of training and I left with a smile on my face, ‘I’m back’. I was training every single day again and my coach said something that I’ve never heard before in my life. He said, ‘I don’t see that Gabi that everyone talks about here in training, that animal. They told me you beat everybody up’. That hurt because I’ve always loved training, and coming back to training for this fight helped me.
“Tournaments were always easy. No disrespect to my opponents, fights were always easy. The hard part is to train, and I wasn’t mentally able to do that with everything that was going on in my life. It hurt to talk about it to other people. I’m a champion, I’m strong, I’m a role model, and I’m mentally weak? How did I allow someone to scam me? I felt embarrassed. Victims feel guilty. I started doing therapy recently. I see the good side and the bad side of everything in life, and I couldn’t see the good side of this.”
