Gabi Garcia has just announced that she will be making a return to her professional MMA career after securing a heavyweight title-fight for an as yet unconfirmed promotion. She’s apparently already signed a contract and although she’s blurred out the promotion she’ll be fighting for and there’s no indication of who her opponent might be, it is clear that it will be a five-round fight for their heavyweight title. Although the decision might come as a surprise to some, Garcia has actually been open about wanting to move back to MMA for quite some time now.
Garcia was at one point in time the most successful female BJJ competitor in the heavier weight classes and she first made the transition to MMA back in 2015, when she had already won 6 IBJJF World Championship gold medals and a pair of ADCC titles. Naturally she was always going to be a pretty successful fighter thanks to her elite grappling background, but she wasn’t going to be able to get many fights given the weight class she competes at. She spent the majority of her career competing for RIZIN FF and over the course of 3 years she managed to rack up a 6-0 (1) professional MMA record.
After 2018, Gabi Garcia decided to leave MMA behind in order to return to professional grappling competition full-time once again. After a few more years of the same success, she was submitted for the first time as a black belt in 2021 and subsequently retired from IBJJF competition. She didn’t retire from competition entirely though and as the reigning world champion she was invited to compete at ADCC 2022. Garcia couldn’t make it to four ADCC titles though as she lost to Amy Campo in the semi-final and ended up settling for a bronze medal instead. Although that might be the last that fans will get to see of Garcia in grappling, it appears as though she’s going for at least one more MMA fight before she calls an end to her combat sports career.
Gabi Garcia announced the news that she was going to make a return to professional MMA with a title-fight in a recent post to the story on her official Instagram account:
