Happy with decision to retire from fighting, Leonard Garcia shifts focus to discovering BKFC talent

Leonard Garcia is content with his decision to hang up the gloves, but he’s not done with the combat sports world.

In 1999, Garcia (18-13-1 MMA, 2-1 BKFC) made his professional MMA debut and gave 21 years of his blood, sweat, and tears to combat sports competition up until his retirement earlier this year in March. With memorable fights in the UFC, WEC, Legacy FC, and most recently BKFC, Garcia has numerous exciting fights on his resume.

Time catches up to everyone, and Garcia is grateful he can exit competition without a need to compete, whether it be mentally or finacially. “If you made a good career and you made right decisions in your life, you should have something to fall back on and that helped me a lot,” Garcia told MMA Junkie after BKFC 19. “I had something to fall back on and I had that support and I had everything else, so it’s like right now it’s just an itch, it’s not a need…I mean, once you’re a fighter, you’re always a fighter. It never goes away from me. So it’s more of me fighting myself in my head than having a need to go do a fight.”

Garcia walked away from combat sports following a victory over Joe Elmore at BKFC 16 in March. He admits if bareknuckle competition was around when he was younger, he would have never been an MMA fighter.

“If BKFC had been around from the very beginning, I would have never been known in any other sport,” Garcia said. “This was a sport made just for a guy like me. This is what I love to do. I hated grappling. You know, I forced myself to get a black belt, too. I forced myself to learn wrestling and it was never like, fun. But punching was always my first love.”

Content with his decision to retire at 42 years of age, Garcia has shifted his focus to help discover new talent to enter bareknuckle competition with BKFC, which allows him to stay close to combat sports without actually putting his body at risk.

“I’m doing the BKFC tryouts,” Garcia explained. “So my goal now is to find guys are going to come in here and put on great shows, and help manage them, help them make the right decisions, and hopefully, pick the right fights. I hate saying it that way, but it’s like, I don’t want to give guys too much danger.

I want to put them in a position to where they can grow, not get eaten up, or anything else, you know? It’s a fight, anything can happen, but you want to put them in the best position to keep playing the game, not one and done.”

Watch the full interview with “Bad Boy” in the video below.