Gabi Garcia has called out PFL star and world Judo champion Kayla Harrison, claiming that she absolutely wants to fight her.
Garcia, who competes as a heavyweight, claimed in an interview with AG Fight that she does indeed want to fight Harrison, as Harrison has been speaking a lot about Garcia on the internet. Garcia claims she is now stepping up to the plate, but that Harrison is now attempting to avoid her instead.
“Kayla (Harrison) came on the internet to talk shit, Julia Budd (ex-Bellator champion) too. I accepted all these fights, but she (Kayla) always said that I was an easy fight. That I had no technique to fight her. But the Gabi of yesteryear is not the same as Gabi (today). Then I came to my manager and said: ‘Look, she is challenging me, I want to fight with her. What does she want to fight with me? ‘ Then it starts: ‘I fight in any category, I fight open weight’. I said: ‘No, it will arrive on time and it will not be like this’. Then: ‘No, I want a test at Gabi, I want this, I want that’. All right then! Let’s go! Do you want to test me all the time? What you want? Do you want me to hit how much weight? I talked to my doctor, (to find out) what the minimum weight I could get. Everything she was asking for. (But) in reality, she doesn’t want to fight ”,
“So, she comes to say, ‘I’m number one.’ You are the number one of the PFL, who put you in (good) fights and made an event for you, as Rizin also put up a good fight for me,” Gabi Garcia added. “Only she does not come to say that she is number one, because there is Amanda (Nunes), well, there is Cris (Cyborg). She is far from being … So if I am a very easy fight, why not fight me? Her last opponent seems to have 11 losses. I come from seven victories. So then. Kayla, I want to fight you. First time I challenge someone. She challenged me, we have been talking for two years now, and I say: ‘What do you want to be able to fight with me? Do you want the test, the (anti) doping? Do you want me to hit the weight? What you want?’. Because (just) challenging me is easy. So, that’s my goal. I want to fight with her. I don’t know when that will happen,
Ultimately though, there are a lot of issues to this fight ever even happening. The main issue is, of course, the weight disparity between Garcia and Harrison. Harrison, of course, competes in the 155lb division in the PFL, whilst, as outlined, Garcia competes in RIZIN as a heavyweight. Even a catchweight fight would most likely be either too much weight for Harrison to move up to and too much weight for Garcia to move down. Garcia naturally carries a massive frame anyway, so there is a limit to how much weight she could cut. Harrison would also lose a lot of her natural explosiveness and speed moving up too much weight either.
This does not even consider the fact that the two women compete in two different promotions. Harrison competes in the U.S. based PFL, whilst Garcia competes in Japan with RIZIN. Under normal circumstances, the logistics of this fight would have been difficult, but even more so now with COVID-19 remaining at large globally, it is extremely unlikely that this fight would happen any time soon.
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