Steve Garcia doesn’t want to sit around complaining too much but he’s grown frustrated by the lack of movement in the featherweight division recently.
Current champion Alexander Volkanovski only fought once in 2025 when he claimed the vacant title with a win over Diego Lopes back in April. While there are rumors that Volkanovski is expected to return in February with a potential UFC show heading to Australia, there’s still no exact word on when he might fight again or who’s actually going to get the shot at his belt.
There are numerous contenders vying for that opportunity and Garcia wishes everybody would just concentrate on staying busy rather than holding out hope that a title shot is awaiting them.
“The featherweight division is kind of put on hold. It’s driving me nuts,” Garcia told MMA Figthing. “Everybody thinks they’re getting the next title shot from [No. 6] below. They can only want one person to face [Alexander Volkanovski]. You guys have to fight anyway so why don’t you keep fighting? But everybody thinks they’re going to get the next shot.
“That’s just not how it works. At the end, I can only control what I can control and that means that I just keep fighting. That’s how I make my money. That’s how I provide for my family. That’s how I get my name out there.”
Top-ranked contender Movsar Evloev might seem like the logical choice to get a title shot, but it almost seems like a foregone conclusion that he’s going to get skipped over. Lopes made a compelling case for a rematch against Volkanovski after he took out highly touted Brazilian fighter Jean Silva and then Aljamain Sterling also called for his own title shot off a win over Brian Ortega.
There’s also Lerone Murphy, who remains undefeated and just delivered a potential Knockout of the Year with his win over Aaron Pico.
That’s a whole lot of people asking for the next title shot, with only one of them actually getting it. For his part, Garcia believes the motivation for everybody asking to fight Volkanovski rather than just facing the next person in line is due to a perceived vulnerability in the UFC featherweight champion.
“The Volk that we saw fight Diego Lopes is a beatable Volk,” Garcia said. ‘I think they’re kind of licking their chops. He didn’t look like the Volk of old. Not to me. In my head, I could go beat Volk next week. Unfortunately, I’ve got to earn my stripes to get there. I understand that. But everybody else is doing the same thing and I’m another person in the herd that’s trying to do exactly what everybody else is trying to do in the rankings.
“We want to get to that top spot. Some people get it faster than others. My luck, I’ve got to go through everybody and that’s OK.”
While he’s never been the most vocal fighter on the roster, Garcia did express some anger over certain athletes getting opportunities that haven’t necessarily been earned while he’s scratching and clawing his way up the rankings.
Perhaps the best example was Aaron Pico signing with the UFC as a free agent and then immediately getting booked against Evloev, eventually facing Murphy in his debut without a single fight of UFC experience under his belt. While Pico delivered an ultra-exciting performance, he ultimately suffered a brutal knockout after Murphy clocked him with a brutal spinning back elbow.
There’s also former Bellator featherweight champion Patricio Pitbull signing with the UFC and getting a matchup against Yair Rodriguez on his first day at work with the new promotion. Pitbull also lost and his performance definitely seemed uninspired, at least based on getting such a great opportunity in a debut fight.
“The problem is that I’ve been in both organizations so I feel I can elaborate on both of them,” Garcia explained. “You come to the UFC from Bellator, it’s different. The lights are different. The magnitude’s different. The fans are bigger. There’s more at stake. It’s just a lot of pressure. There’s a lot more to it than just being at an organization like Bellator. They treated me fine. I wasn’t in a bad situation over there but UFC is prime. You come to the biggest organization, it’s like one of my buddies Patchy Mix. He hasn’t had the best showing but in Bellator he looked amazing. What’s crazy is I know the potential of Patchy and Patchy, I don’t know what’s going on with him. I don’t know if it’s a head thing, I don’t know if the lights but coming over, it’s just a different situation. Some people adapt, some people don’t
“[Patricio Pitbull] literally had almost a No. 1 contender fight and you blew it. It’s kind of hard because I don’t have the Dana White privilege. I don’t get that opportunity. I have to knock everybody out on the way but it just goes to show the UFC’s at a different level and the fighters at the UFC are a different caliber. I feel like maybe their opposition wouldn’t be able to compere here either and they’re the ones that were winning in those bouts. Who knows. It’s hard to tell. UFC is a different beast. It really is.”
Don’t take anything Garcia says as jealousy brimming to the surface after he quietly built a six-fight win streak with five of those ending by knockout. Instead, Garcia has accepted that he might have to work twice as hard as the guy just ahead of him or behind him in the rankings but that’s just the sport.
The next step comes at UFC Vegas 110 on Saturday when he faces David Onama in the main event.
“For me, I don’t have the biggest mouth. So I’ve got to make sure I do it somehow,” Garcia explained. “I think people love knockouts so I’m going to give these people exactly what they want. Why do they tune into UFC? Because they want to see that. I’m going to be the guy that they tune into to watch that.”
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