“I got into some trouble in school, and I was an athlete but I wasn’t a fighter really, so I told my dad I need to learn how to defend myself,” he said. “And MMA wasn’t big back then. It wasn’t brand new, it was still kind of coming out, but it was Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock and that was the era, so it wasn’t really popular. So I told my dad, I need to learn how to protect myself. Can you put me in some boxing lessons or something? My grandfather and my dad, they love watching boxing and my dad said, ‘I know this guy – Lionel Lanham – he does this combat martial arts stuff.’ And his dad taught my brother and my dad Shotokan karate. That’s how we linked up with Lionel.
“And literally that night, my dad runs into him at Walmart,” Garcia continues. “So I said, ‘All right, I gotta go.’ The next day, the first thing I learned was a rear naked choke, and I didn’t know what I was doing, but he showed me how to do it and I did it. And I was just hooked. It was so much fun and it was history after that.”
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Fifteen pro MMA fights are in the books, and he’s on the roster of the biggest promotion in the sport. Not bad, but while Garcia, a former baseball player and drummer, could probably do whatever he wants to do in life, he has put too much into prizefighting to stop now.
“I put too much time and effort into my fight game, that for you guys to not be able to see it, that would be a shame,” he said. “I’m 29 now and I’ve been training since I was 15 years old. I put a lot of time, a lot of money into this; my family’s put in a lot of time and money into this career, and I’ll always be able to work, no matter where I’m at. But all I know is that this sport’s gonna pay me back. I’ve paid a lot of dues for this sport, and it’s time to start my rise up to the top. Whether it’s slow or it takes off, I’m not sure, but I’m gonna chip away at this and it’s gonna go in the right direction. To let it slip away or not give it everything I got, it would be a shame. So I’m gonna do all I can for it.”
