Leonard Garcia's team bashes Bellator, questions claim of 'phantom' rep

Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney claims his promotion never once contacted Leonard Garcia (15-11-1) about a potential deal with the tournament-based promotion. Garcia’s team isn’t buying it.

“In light of Bellator’s alleged legal chicanery with their own champions like Eddie Alvarez and Zach Makovsky, and high-profile fighters like Leonard Garcia making known their desire to avoid a potentially bad situation, it is not surprising Bellator is trying to get ahead of the bad PR plaguing their promotion,” Garcia’s reps at Haymaker’s Empire Sports Management wrote in a statement issued to MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “However, this story about a ‘phantom’ Bellator representative making phony offers to fighters just strains credulity.”

Garcia fought 17 times under the Zuffa banner from 2007 until this past month’s UFC 159 event. While always an entertaining brawler, Garcia suffered five consecutive losses in the UFC’s octagon and was released from his contract with the promotion.

Following his release, Garcia told MMAFighting.com he was fielding offers from World Series of Fighting and Bellator, and was planning on changing training homes from Jackson/Winkeljohn MMA to Team Alpha Male. He also mentioned he wasn’t necessarily considering the Bellator offer due to a few ongoing conflicts between the promotion and its athletes, including Alvarez and Makovsky.

Ultimately, Garcia signed a three-fight deal with the Texas-based Legacy FC promotion. However, Bellator founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney took exception to Garcia’s claims and said his promotion never contacted the 33-year-old featherweight.

“Leonard Garcia has never been approached by our company,” Rebney on Friday told MMAjunkie.com. “We have never had any interest or expressed any interest in signing Leonard Garcia. But he claimed to have been approached by Bellator about signing. Now, I’ve got a lot of respect for anybody who steps inside the cage. I’ve got a lot of respect for anybody who’s got the guts to be a professional mixed martial artist. But with all due respect, we had no interest in signing him.”

Garcia’s camp isn’y buying Rebney’s explanation.

“One must wonder, if this had actually been occurring, why Bellator waited until now – after Garcia made known his and other fighters’ mistrust of their promotion – to suddenly decide to make mention of ‘The Bellator Phantom,’” the statement reads. “The claim appears childish and far-fetched at best.”

Haymaker’s Empire Sports Management President Jerry Villasenor said he and his team did not speak with anyone from Bellator and that the promotion instead contacted Garcia directly. Unfortunately, he said neither he nor Garcia could identify the Bellator employee that reached out with the offer. However, he stood by his claim that Rebney wasn’t being truthful.

“Leonard got the call the day it had been announced that he had been cut by the UFC,” Villasenor said. “He received tons of calls for interviews and tons of calls from promoters expressing interest. I think once they realized that Leonard had no interest is when the ‘Phantom’ was born.”

Rebney said Garcia wasn’t the only victim of the hoax and that a ‘well-known’ gym owner in the Southwest, as well as an East Coast-based fighter manager, had also been contacted by a false representative. But Garcia’s team isn’t buying the story, and they don’t appreciate what they consider to be an attack on their fighter.

“Haymaker’s Empire Sports Management stands behind its fighters and won’t allow them to be trashed by any organization,” Garcia’s reps stated.

(Pictured: Leonard Garcia)