Steve Garcia is ready for a step up in competition.
After earning his seventh consecutive victory with a first-round stoppage of David Onama on Saturday, Garcia (19-5 MMA, 8-2 UFC) has begun to set his sights higher in the UFC featherweight rankings.
Following his win in the main event at UFC Vegas 110, “Mean Machine” climbed four spots to No. 8. And while potential matchups against fighters like Lerone Murphy, Youssef Zalal, and Movsar Evloev sound appealing, Garcia knows it might be tough to persuade one of the division’s top contenders to sign on the dotted line to face him.
“It's interesting because like, I’ll fight any of those guys, you know what I mean?,” Garcia told Ariel Helwani on Tuesday. “It doesn't necessarily have to be the fact that they're so far ahead. But if they're available, why wouldn't that make sense? But then again, they don't want to fight backwards, just like I didn't want to fight backwards. So I get it. Lerone's winning, you know, he wants to go forward. Who else is winning? Zalal, he's winning. He wants to go forward. There's a lot of reasons.”
"He Needs To Figure It Out"
One fighter who seems to be trapped in limbo at 145 pounds is Movsar Evloev, the division’s no. 1-ranked contender. Evloev (19-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) has beaten every single opponent the UFC has placed in front of him since signing with the organization back in 2019, but amazingly has yet to pick up a single finish inside the Octagon.
“Yeah, Movsar, I feel honestly, I feel bad for the guy, but the dude needs to figure it out,” Garcia said of Evloev. “Like that's the truth. He needs to figure it out. He needs to be like…he needs to turn into a submission artist, or he needs to start freaking ground and pounding better.
“He needs to go find a different camp because the way he's winning is not doing him any favors. That's just the problem. But as a purist, he probably is the guy that deserves a shot if we're being honest. I truly feel that way because he hasn't lost. He's boring, but it doesn't seem like it's working out very like well for him. I really can't say that it's working out for him, but he's up there. What is he, number one, number two? I mean you would think he's not next up, right? He's on deck.”
