Marcelo Garcia is one of the biggest legends in the history of BJJ but he’s never been known as a competitor who uses leglocks in his matches. Although the prime of his career was before leglocks really exploded in popularity, there were still plenty of grapplers in his generation who used them. He had over a hundred professional Jiu-Jitsu matches at the highest level of the sport from 2002 to 2011, but he only has a single win by heel hook on his record. That submission finish came in the absolute division of ADCC 2005, when he met Ricco Rodriguez in the opening round.
That’s a big part of what makes his upcoming match with Masakazu Imanari at ONE 170 so interesting, as leglocks are exactly what Imanari has always specialised in. Marcelo Garcia recently took part in an interview with Ariel Helwani and when he was asked about preparing for that game, and he was honest about why he’s never been a fan of leglocks:
“I don’t like to exchange like a foot (or) ankle-lock attack, I feel like it’s almost like a 50% chance, you know what I mean? I feel like it’s one of the only moves that when you attack someone, the person can attack you back with the same move. Different than guillotine, different than like a rear-naked choke. When you attack someone with the guillotine or rear-naked choke, you have to deal just with defending yourself. You cannot really attack back.”
Although Garcia avoided leglocks, he was never actually caught with one at any point during his career. That shows that although he might not be a fan of using them himself, he’s still well-versed in how to shut those attacks down and escape them when necessary. That’s exactly how he plans on approaching the match with Masakazu Imanari too:
“So it’s a part of the game that I don’t like to risk. I want to have like the odds in my favor. So my whole point is like I’m just not getting into his game. I believe I have a good defense, I believe I have trained that for my entire life because I don’t wanna be in that gamble scenario. That gamble where I have less chance than my opponent, I feel like I wanna go where I have most of the chance. Where it’s my game, my attack, that’s what I was planning to do.”
The full interview with Marcelo Garcia where he explains why he doesn’t like leglocks was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of The Ariel Helwani Show:
