Marcelo Garcia recently revealed the reason he decided to sign with ONE Championship, setting up a return to professional grappling after more than a decade away from competition. He was at one point one of the best grapplers in the world and he’s since become a legendary figure, often a top pick for the greatest of all time. The last time he stepped on mats was back at ADCC 2011 so most people had assumed he was gone for good, and that assumption felt even more concrete when he revealed he was diagnosed with cancer in 2023 and undergoing treatment for the illness.
He has since made a recovery and has returned to training, alongside the dozens of elite black belts that have been promoted under him over the years. That’s when he made the shocking announcement that he was making his return to competition with ONE Championship. It’s among the biggest news of this year and the BJJ world was excited by the idea of seeing Marcelo Garcia in action again, so he recently explained in an interview with ONE Championship why he stopped competing in the first place:
“I don’t know if people realize it, but I never retired. Never ever did I say the word ‘retired.’ But it was definitely a plan to take time off of competition for two different reasons. One was that I was just not so excited to go compete, and I felt like I wanted time to focus on something that would make me happier. And at that moment, it was my gym in New York City. I was taking a lot of time, just teaching every day, not traveling, just focusing on my students. And then, once I had a kid, obviously, life turned upside down. And then I felt like, ‘Oh, I wanna be the best that I could as a father, as a dad.’ So I took that time.”
Obviously a legend like Marcelo Garcia would have had offers from many major grappling promotions from all around the world over the years, so people were curious as to why he chose ONE Championship over all of them. According to Garcia it wasn’t just the promotion itself that interested him, it was also down to one of they key figures involved in their submission grappling divisions:
“I just like to be appreciated. I spent so much time in jiu-jitsu. In competition. I feel I always have given my best, and I feel like the appreciation from ONE Championship came at the right time. They value me. They value my time. And reality is I can name every organization that was trying to convince me to go compete. But then ONE, especially with Leozinho, Leo Vieira is somebody that is close to me, close to my family. He came in for us. If I wanna come back, I need to come back to an organization that values my work, that values my time, that appreciates the athlete. And that’s what I felt with ONE.”
Marcelo Garcia will now be making his ONE Championship debut relatively soon, although there’s no news yet on who the promotion has decided to match him against. They have plenty of options of course, as they have dozens of grapplers under contract at the moment and plenty of MMA fighters who would happily switch sports to take on a legend like Garcia.
