Time will tell if the “good vibes” Alex Garcia is feeling in Moncton translate to a win, but for now, he’s enjoying feeling like he’s at home as UFC Fight Night 138 approaches.
Moncton, NB — For Alex Garcia, Moncton, New Brunswick feels a little bit like home. Not home as in the Dominican Republic, where Garcia originally hails from, but his adopted home of Montreal, Quebec. That’s no doubt why Garcia felt a “good energy” when he arrived in the east coast city ahead of this weekend’s UFC Moncton.
Opposite him in the octagon on Saturday this time out will be Court McGee, a longtime UFC veteran and Ultimate Fighter winner. It’s a fight he’s excited for, but then, he always is. “I’m always excited for every call I get to fight,” he explained to reporters at the UFC Moncton media day. “I’m always excited to compete. It can be Court McGee or anybody else. I’m always excited to fight, any time.”
He admits, though, that in this case, McGee is a fighter he watched before landing in the UFC himself. “Yes I did watch him back in the day, before I was in the UFC actually,” he explained. “It’s good, what I’ve become today. I get to compete with those guys now, at this level. I looked [up to them] when I was younger, in my day, but now he’s my opponent. So looking forward to the fight Saturday night.”
There’s no issue fighting someone he admires, mind you. In this game, as Garcia explains, you pretty much have to. “I’m always chasing my dreams,” he stated. “To be who you want to be, with those guys still in front of you, you will have to fight them to become somebody like them, or a little bit more further in your career.”
“I look up to Court McGee, but Saturday night is going to be my night.”
Garcia remains with Montreal’s famed TriStar gym, though for this fight, he brought his original coach from back in the Dominican Republic in for training as well. “We understand each other, we know each other since back in the day from before I was thinking even to become a fighter.”
Aside from that, not much has changed. Even the locale seems familiar. “Since I land here, I feel that energy, a very good vibe here,” said Garcia of Moncton, NB. “A very good energy. It feels like home to me, it feels like in Montreal. I’m from the Dominican Republic, but now I’ve been here the last ten years, so Canada is my home now. So for me, it still [Moncton] feels like fighting at home.”
When asked to expand on that feeling, Garcia said that “I had a good energy when I came here. I feel like I was in Montreal.” What reminded him of that was “the people, the weather. I’m from Montreal now, I’m from Dominican Republic, but I lived in Montreal the last ten years. Montreal is home.” What he sees as similar between the two, and likes about Moncton, is that “people are very friendly, they’re nice, and I like that. Everywhere you go, in a store, people talk to you, they try to help you. Even if they don’t know you. I like that.”
Last time out, things didn’t go Garcia’s way, as he dropped a decision to Ryan LaFlare at UFC Atlantic City. There were some lessons learned, the biggest being that “I wasn’t aggressive enough in a way. I was holding myself too much to go to the third round.”
He doesn’t expect it to happen again. “That won’t be the case no more.”
Alex Garcia meets Court McGee on the main card of UFC Moncton on Saturday, October 27 at the Avenir Centre in Moncton, NB. The card airs like on FOX Sports 1 (TSN 5 in Canada).
