Marcelo Garcia is one of the biggest legends in BJJ history and he had a pretty brief MMA career at one point in time, but apparently he almost fought Nick Diaz. He revealed that in a recent interview with MMAFighting, where they did a deep dive into that period of his life. Garcia had already established himself as one of the best grapplers in the world with three ADCC titles and two IBJJF World Championship titles by the time he made the transition to MMA in 2007. He signed a contract with K-1 and made his debut against veteran Dae Won Kim, but things didn’t go according to plan.
Garcia lost in the second round when he suffered a nasty cut and couldn’t continue, and that was the first and only time he competed in the sport. When asked if he regretted not fighting again, Garcia was pretty open about his feelings on the topic:
“Not that I regret it, but I had trained so much after that loss that I feel I had to let it out at someone. Someone had to pay for all the training I did after I lost that fight. And I ended up never coming back to MMA.”
His contract with K-1 was apparently pretty restrictive though, and Garcia explained that it was something that actually ended up discouraging him from fighting again:
“Time was passing by and I wondering if I would still be able to compete in Jiu-Jitsu if I ever came back. That made me lose my interest to fight MMA entirely. Thank God I was able to go back to win three more (IBJJF) Worlds and another ADCC, so I think I gave up on the idea of fighting MMA at the right time. But it was frustrating because I trained so much after that loss. I moved overseas to train with the best at American Top Team and got beat up every day. I got beat up because I wanted to beat someone too, but I couldn’t beat anyone back. That was frustrating.”
That’s when Marcelo Garcia revealed that an MMA fight with Nick Diaz was on the horizon at one point:
“People don’t know, but I got really close to fighting Nick Diaz. That’s the one I got the closest to fight, we even watched his tapes and all, but it didn’t work out.”
Although the potential fight with Nick Diaz was undoubtedly the most shocking part of the interview with Marcelo Garcia, he also spoke about whether he would ever consider returning to MMA again:
“I kept the desire to fight MMA inside of me, especially because of that frustration… but as I get older and I see people talking more and more about the problems of getting hit in the head, why will I… I want to become a healthier person, and the idea of coming back to MMA at 42 would not be the smartest. My dream, my idea of happiness in life is to one day get to see my grandkids grow up. With this cancer, my biggest fear was not seeing my kids grow. Imagine getting older and having your grandkids around and not be able think or have any problem because of many hits to the head. It’s easy for me to know it’s not the brightest thing for me.”
