Gabi Garcia will no longer be making her comeback to professional MMA with a rematch against Barbara Nepomucen, as the fight has been cancelled. The fight was scheduled for Centurion FC 19 but it could no longer go ahead due to the floods that have happened recently in Brazil, something that Garcia’s family was effected by directly. The event itself will still go ahead as planned and the promotion has decided to show solidarity with other victims of the flooding by offering free entry to the event in exchange for a kilogram of basic necessities being donated to the cause.
Gabi Garcia announced her MMA comeback earlier this year and naturally it drew a lot of attention, as she has been absent from the sport for 6 years at this point. She was already one of the most successful grapplers in history for quite some time and her incredible physical stature meant that a lot of eyes were on her as she made her MMA debut back in 2015. Garcia put together 6-0 (1) professional MMA record over the next 3 years while spending the majority of her career fighting for RIZIN FF, with one of those fights being a first-round submission win over Barbara Nepomuceno.
Although Nepomuceno hadn’t fought in professional MMA before then and has not fought under that ruleset since, she is an elite kickboxer and this was a traditional striker vs grappler matchup. That meant that there was plenty of interest when the rematch was announced and it would be the ideal challenge for Garcia to take as she makes her return to the sport. Although there’s no news as yet on if the fight will be rebooked for a future date, both women were clearly eager to take the fight in the first place.
Centurion MMA announced the news that Gabi Garcia would no longer be making her MMA comeback at CFC 19 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
