Pat Garcia Balances Family, Career and His Competitive Spirit
Pat Garcia is not your typical Palmer College student. At 26 years old, he is a dedicated family man who is happily married and has two boys ages 4 and 1. After 3 years at Palmer College, Garcia is be graduating and is planning on returning to his hometown of Midville, Utah for an preceptorship and eventually making his career as a chiropractor helping those in pain.
Not only is he good at curing back pains, he is very good at inflicting pain just about everywhere else. When he is not juggling college and family life you can bet you’ll find him at Nick Tarpein’s School of Karate in Davenport training intensely for his next Mixed Martial Arts fight.
With an amateur MMA record of 3-0, he’s had a good start, but his collegiate wrestling accomplishments are much more impressive. In 2002 Garcia was named Jr. College All-American; he was a two-time Conference Champion at Western Wyoming Community College; he placed 3rd in the country in the National Jr. College Athletic Association (NJCAA). He transferred to Northern Iowa University where he won the conference, and in 2004 was one match away from placing All-American in Division-A. Garcia was winning the match with only 30 seconds left in the match and a 4-0 lead, he shifted to a defensive mode but got taken down twice quickly and eventually lost by one point.
“A match that haunts me every day,” Garcia says with look of disappointment. “My last season was 04 and it still eats me up, it bugs me. I sit there and think about it and it drives me crazy.”
While that single loss bothers him, he still manages to find the silver lining, “Sometimes you learn the hard way, but that’s what makes you stronger as an athlete, as a competitor.”
It is obvious that the Spanish pride runs through his blood. Garcia’s mother is from Spanish descent and his father was of Mexican descent, both were born in New Mexico but moved to Utah. Garcia says that his mother – like many mothers of fighters – worries about him fighting. “You know moms.”
His father passed away in Nov. of last year; it was a difficult time of mourning around the same time he trained for a match in Feb. Again Garcia found something positive, “It pushed the motivation in me, to succeed and to want to make him proud,” Garcia said. “He’d be by my side, ever since we were kids; that’s how my dad always was.”
His wife likes watching fights, but not watching him fight. To make things easier for her at home he takes his four year old son to his training sessions and is already sharing with him the basics of wrestling, “He’s like my little coach.”
But it is his one year old who is already showing signs of being aggressive, Garcia said. If they choose the fighting route, Garcia will be happy to support them, his wife may not.
For now Garcia is focusing on his next challenge. He has been busy training for this first professional MMA bout. Garcia and Taurean “The Brick” Bogguess will square off for the lightweight championship at the Fall Brawl on Oct. 18 at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds Expo Center, 2815 West Locust St. in Davenport. Bogguess is a big 145-pounder who has a professional record of 1-1 and is 20-6 as an amateur.
“I hate wrestlers, they don’t bother me one bit,” Bogguess said of Garcia as he takes a break from sparring at Ekim’s Karate and Kickboxing in Silvis, Ill.
The two will make up the main event of this MMA show. The event features 15 fights including a special “Cops vs. Cons” fight, and a women’s fight.
“If chances came if I were to get sponsors and I was able to make a living as a fighter and be training I wouldn’t mind doing that, I think it would be good exposure for me businesswise and competitive-wise,” and even if things don’t work out with MMA, Garcia seem to have a good thing to fall back on, and it is not a fighting cage.
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