Garcia talks about fight, life lessons

Leonard Garcia (16-3), from Lubbock, will take on Mike Brown (20-4) in the World Extreme Cagefighting co-main event Sunday at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi. Garcia will attempt to win Brown's WEC featherweight title belt.

Heading into his fight, Garcia talked about his career, his famous UFC fight with Roger Huerta, a Valley native, learning that his thought-to-be sister actually is his mother and his arrest and later being cleared for his alleged connection in a West Texas cocaine ring.

Q: Is this the biggest fight of your life?

A: As far as opponent and as far as the reward, yes. He's the toughest guy I'll face to date. This one is for the major title and the major dollars. It's the biggest.

Q: You're always the underdog in these fights. Does that get old for you?

A: No, I like it. I like being the underdog. It's when people think you are going to win that puts so much pressure on you. You end up putting so much pressure on yourself and you tend to lose focus. I've always been the underdog. I'm used to it. And even if I win this one, people probably are still doing to consider me the underdog.

Q: Well, if you win this one, they probably won't, right?

A: People are naïve. They will probably say I got lucky the first time. I expect when I get though with Mike, people are still going to say I'm the underdog. That's OK with me.

Q: Did that 2007 fight with Roger, which is considered one of the greatest UFC fights in history and was captured on the front of Sports Illustrated, ignite your career?

A: It did. And it's funny, because even though I lost that fight, it boosted my career. It boosted both of our careers. After that fight, people started taking notice.

Q: You know Roger is a Valley native, don't you?

A: Yeah, we trained together in Minnesota and he was telling me all about South Texas. The funny thing about Roger and me is that we've learned a lot from each other.

Q: You have a wild story about how you found out your parents were actually your grandparents and your sister was actually your mother. Just how weird was that?

A: It sounds a lot weirder than what it actually is. I always kind of knew it. But when I turned 18, they told me. ... My mom got pregnant when she was 16, and had me at 17. Back then, 29 years ago, that type of stuff didn't fly. So they did what they thought was best, and my grandparents raised me as their kid. And my mom, she acted like my sister.

But I knew something was up. She seemed like a lot more than a sister.

Q: So, more than anything it just made sense?

A: When they told me I wasn't mad or anything. It just added up. My mom (then thought to be his sister) just seemed more motherly toward me, always looking out for me when I was a kid. We just always had that special bond, different than a brother-sister bond. My grandparents and mom were just doing what they thought was best for me.

Q: Everyone talks about how you're the nicest guy you will ever meet in MMA. Of course, last year you ran into some trouble with the law, was arrested and later cleared on alleged charges. What did you learn from that situation in 2008?

A: It was one of those situations where my friend was involved with (cocaine). I was that person, like anyone else would be, that thought there was no need to tell the police. I thought if I wasn't selling the dope, wasn't using the dope but my friend was, that I was OK. I just figured if I didn't have anything to do with the dope, I was in the clear. Truth of the matter is that when you deal with dope, only two things are going to happen, and neither of them are good. You're either going to end up in jail, like me friend did, or you are going to have people after you that you really don't want to be after you.

It was a case where I was in the right place at the wrong time.

Q: If you had it to do over, what would you do?

A: My biggest regret is not telling my friend that what he was doing was wrong. I should have sat him down and had that talk with him. I didn't. I thought that if he was doing it and I wasn't, there was no problem. Now that biggest regret is that my friend is in jail. My biggest regret is that here I am now short one friend.

Q: Has that incident lit a spark in you leading up to this fight?

A: Yes it has. I know people say this all the time, but I really appreciate life and what I have a lot more. I don't take anything for granted anymore. You know, everyone does wrong in life. It's just going to happen. But we need to limit our wrongs.