Gabrielle “Gabi” Garcia is a Brazilian Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and grappling world champion, and member of the IBJJF Hall of Fame. She trains in São Paulo with Fabio Gurgel, at the Alliance team, where she has achieved two Abu Dhabi Combat Club championships and nine world Brazilian jiu-jitsu championships. In April 2014, Gabrielle earned two golds at the Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu Jitsu Championship in the Female Brown Black Adult and Female Brown Black Adult Open Weight divisions.
[/one_half] [one_half_last][/one_half_last]I want to thank all of my fans in the Arab world.
I want to say thank you all for always kindly having me with open arms and for all respect and kindness you all have for our sport.
This means a lot to me, THANK YOU!
Having gotten bored with demolishing everyone in BJJ competitions, Garcia has stated a desire to move into mixed martial arts competition.
Arabs MMA decided to interview the invincible female champion as news of another visit to UAE dwelled around. Will she be eying double gold for this year too or is this visit for commercial purposes only. Let’s wait and see.
You have plans to visit the UAE very soon! What is this visit about?
Well, I will be traveling to UAE next month to promote the World Pro Jiu jitsu tournament alongside with the open weight male champion Marcus Almeida (Buchecha). As for the TV coverage for this event, we will mostly be at TV channels from Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
You were recently listed as one of the 10 most influential women in the history of Jiu Jitsu, how do you cope with that?
I’ve done my part and paid my dues to achieve what I am today, nothing comes without sacrifice, dedication and hard work. I trained really hard for it and to conquer my titles, and it’s only fair for me to reach this far… (laughs).
But it also doesn’t bother me at all to be in such a position, just the opposite; it increases the responsibility and motivates me to train even more because women who look up to us athletes, will be looking for this never ending source of motivation.
In the Social Media we see a “new” Gabi Garcia with a “never seen before” shape, is it related with a upcoming MM debut somehow?
Who knows? I don’t rule anything out… To be quite frank, my diet is really tough now, it was actually to debut in an MMA fight that didn’t happen, but since I already went the distance; I decided to drop even more my weight to then start thinking about a debut in MMA in the very near future. When? It could December maybe, we just have to wait and see…
In the last few weeks your name was the top news in the fight world, especially MMA. There were lots of talk but very little was proven. There were rumors about a fight in Japan with a bantamweight. What’s the truth and what’s a lie about that?
No, none of that was accurate, it was all rumors… The only truth behind this news was that there was a fight in Japan on the 23rd of this month and negotiations were under way, but it was never against a bantamweight opponent. As for that fight, the negotiations were roaming around the 87 kg weight class.
