Days after Barbara Nepomuceno called Gabi Garcia out — again — in an interview with MMA Fighting, Rizin Fighting Federation announced that the female fighters would finally collide at the Dec. 31 card in Saitama, Japan.
Nepomuceno, who has a five-fight contract with South Korean promotion ROAD FC but was authorized to take the Rizin bout with Garcia, has been asking for a fight with Garcia since 2015, and admits she was surprised to see it finally go down before the end of the year.
Nepomuceno expected to make her MMA debut in late-2018 or early-2019, she told MMA Fighting, “but I didn’t expect it to be against Gabi because I’ve been trying to fight her for three years, and we were having a hard time getting it done.