Many jiu-jitsu players and wrestlers have built successful careers in mixed martial arts after winning gold medals at the ADCC, from Mark Kerr to Fabricio Werdum to Demian Maia to Ronaldo Souza, but one grappling phenom apparently never went all-in on the move.
Almost 20 years after his sole appearance in a ring, four-time ADCC champion Marcelo Garcia says it was all due to bad luck — and a bad deal.
Garcia was a decorated grappler with two IBJJF World Championships and a trio of ADCC golds on his résumé when Japanese promotion K-1 offered him a contract for their MMA arm K-1 Hero’s. Garcia was booked against 10-4 veteran Dae Won Kim in October 2007 in South Korea and lost via doctor stoppage after a nasty knee to the head left him cut and bloodied in Round 2.
“Not that I regret [not fighting MMA again], but I had trained so much after that loss that I feel I had to let it out at someone,” Garcia laughed during an interview with MMA Fighting. “Someone had to pay for all the training I did after I lost that fight. And I ended up never coming back to MMA.”
The jiu-jitsu legend said he was “stuck” in the contract with K-1 that didn’t allow him to go back to grappling tournaments occasionally and didn’t give him fights either. Garcia said he was presented with multiple dates and opponents after that defeat, but it never came to fruition.
“Time was passing by and I wondering if I would still be able to compete in jiu-jitsu if I ever came back,” Garcia said. “That made me lose me 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 [laughs]. That was frustrating.”
Back to action after more than a decade away from competition to face Masakazu Imanari in a grappling match at Friday’s ONE 170 in Thailand, “Marcelinho” revealed he nearly had one MMA fight booked for 2008, but it also fizzled.
“People don’t know, but I got really close to fighting Nick Diaz,” Garcia said. The future Strikeforce champion and UFC title contender was 15-7 at the time with octagon wins over the likes of Robbie Lawler, Gleison Tibau, Josh Neer. “That’s the one I got the closest to fight, we even watched his tapes and all, but it didn’t work out.”
Now at age 42 and under contract with ONE Championship to compete in grappling, Garcia rules out the idea of putting back the gloves for another comeback.
“I kept the desire to fight MMA inside of me, especially because of that frustration,” Garcia said, “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 [stomach] 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 [laughs].”
Garcia revealed in early 2023 he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, but has since beaten the disease. Yet, he refuses to make it a bigger deal that it already is.
Photo via Marcelo Garcia
“Not everybody has the chance to deal with their own death, to get this close to death, and I think that’s what happened with me,” Garcia said. “That was the first time I got this close to dying, but at the same time I don’t want to make this bigger than the other challenges I had to face, especially because I want to feel like it’s gone already. I’m cancer-free for a year and a half now, but if I definitely have to put it up there as one of my more difficult challenges. But I don’t want to imagine that it was this great difficulty because my difficulty doesn’t necessarily is harder than yours.”
Garcia said he was approached by many grappling promotions over the past 13 years inquiring about a potential return to the mats, but never engaged in negotiations. Instead, he focused on growing his team and being the best father he could. Garcia even learned how to cook after his second son was born with severe allergies.
As time went by, the desire to test himself again only grew. Leo Vieira, the vice president of grappling at ONE Championship, is a good friend of his—and a coach to his wife—and he was smart enough to wait for the right time to approach Garcia with an offer he couldn’t pass on.
“ONE was the one paying the most, of course,” Garcia laughed. “ONE was the one we actually got to discuss numbers. Every six months someone would reach out with an offer for me to come back, but I didn’t even discuss numbers because I didn’t want to think about it. I wasn’t ready yet. It felt good to see that everybody wanted to see me fight again, though. But ONE reached out through ‘Leozinho’ and he knew how to accommodate my return. He did things the way I wanted for my return.”
Marcelinho has never totally left the grappling scene over the past decade and so. He continues to be a part of the sport as a coach, guiding the new generations in tournaments around the globe. Watching the growth of organizations from the corner helped light that fire again. The stages were bigger, the checks were fatter, and 2025 felt the right time to roll.
“These past 13 years, I always thought about coming back,” Garcia said. “I was always happy in competition, it was always a good time, and I want to feel that again. I’m not getting any younger and if I wait more, it will be even harder for me to come back. It was hard when my kids were born, but they are 9 and 11 now, and I can’t go back when I’m 60 or 80. I wanted to comer back now.
“I stopped competing in jiu-jitsu in 2007 and went to MMA because I wanted something new, I wanted new motivation. MMA paid a lot more than jiu-jitsu, and that definitely helped. Two years had passed and I felt the desire to fight jiu-jitsu again, but they wouldn’t let me do it. And it’s the same feeling now. I stopped competing in 2011, and I missed it again as time went by. I felt like history is repeating itself. I just hope I can go in there and do 100 percent of what I have trained.”
