5 fighters who starred in the WEC but struggled in the UFC

#5 Leonard Garcia

Leonard Garcia's popularity peaked in his WEC days

Another fighter who moved from the UFC to the WEC, Texas favourite Leonard Garcia already had a reputation for putting on wildly exciting fights before he made his way to the smaller promotion, largely thanks to his incredible 2007 Fight of the Year candidate at UFC 69 against then-UFC golden boy Roger Huerta.

‘Bad Boy’ had two more UFC fights in his first run, going 1-1 before joining the WEC as a Featherweight in 2008, where he stunned the MMA world by knocking out Japanese favourite Hiroyuki Takaya in his promotional debut. A big win over former UFC Lightweight kingpin Jens Pulver followed, and that was enough to earn him a title shot.

Garcia came up short in that fight, being submitted by champ Mike Brown, but he quickly bounced back, going 2-2-1 in his next 5 fights, with the most notable one being his split decision win over ‘The Korean Zombie’ in 2010, a fight widely recognised as one of the greatest in the history of MMA. When he edged a decision over Nam Phan in his UFC return in 2010, hopes were high for his career inside the Octagon.

Unfortunately, that never came to pass; ‘Bad Boy’ lost to the Zombie in a rematch in his next fight – finding himself the victim of the UFC’s first-ever Twister submission – and then dropped 4 straight decisions, losing to Nam Phan, Matt Grice, Max Holloway and Cody McKenzie. With a 1-5 UFC record, he was unsurprisingly released from the promotion.

After leaving the UFC, Garcia went 3-2 on the regional circuit before retiring in 2014; the truth is that despite an ultra-entertaining fight style, the Texan probably wasn’t quite good enough for the UFC at that time, and his career peaked with the first Zombie fight in 2010.