Marcelo Garcia has just become the third man to be inducted into the ADCC Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class. He joins the very first man to be included, the legendary Roger Gracie, and the most successful ADCC superfight champion in history, Andre Galvao. This makes Garcia the first person to be included who has not actually won the superfight championship or the absolute division, although at 77kg either of those would have been an incredibly tall order. Regardless, Garcia still did better than anyone else his size ever has in the absolute division, either before or since his tenure as the sport’s most-feared giant-killer.
Not only is Marcelo Garcia the only member of the 77kg division to earn a silver medal in the absolute division but he has also won a bronze medal in it as well. While that is an incredibly impressive feat in his own right, Garcia was also incredibly dominant at his own weight as well as he has won more gold medals in a single division than any other competitor in ADCC history with four. Over a stunning thirty-two ADCC matches, Garcia only ever lost one at 77kg and five overall and managed to maintain a submission finish-rate of over 70% in the matches he won.
All of this started back in 2003 when Garcia had only been competing at black belt for a short while but he burst onto the scene by winning his division, submitting four men and defeating the legendary Renzo Gracie by a 9-point margin. He went on to win again in 2005 and 2007 in exciting fashion before falling just a single match short and earning a silver medal in 2009. He then returned in 2011 to step on to the mats for the final time and although he didn’t enter the absolute division this time around, he still dominated his weightclass and submitted three out of four of his opponents on the way to his fourth gold medal.
It’s for all of these reasons that Marcelo Garcia joining Galvao and Roger in the ADCC Hall of Fame should have come as no surprise at all when the promotion announced it in a post to their official Instagram account:
