Top-ranked contender Jarred “The Monkey God” Brooks might have wanted a trilogy pronto with his old rival in ONE Strawweight MMA World Champion Joshua “The Passion” Pacio, but he’s not going to get everything in an instant.
To get there, he must first hurdle the red-hot #3-ranked Gustavo “El Gladiador” Balart when they clash for the ONE Interim Strawweight MMA World Title at ONE Fight Night 24 on August 3 inside Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.
Though he lost his strap in controversial fashion when he got disqualified for spiking Pacio on the head, Brooks isn’t letting that tough break weigh him down, even if he has to wait months or even a year for the Filipino to recover from his ACL tear.
His position right now isn’t ideal – especially with the fire to win the belt back burning bright – but Brooks isn’t crying over things he can’t control. He’s instead focusing on bettering himself.
“Things happen in life and you just have to adapt. Just like in a fight, somebody kicks you in the head, you got to adapt and kick harder and try to win that personal fight,” Brooks said.
“My biggest opponent has always been me. I think that me conquering myself as a man, and my ego and pride and all that stuff, it’s gonna either bump me off or break me down. But I’m willing to put my nuts on the table and I always have,” he added.
“I love mixed martial arts, and I love my family even more, so I can’t wait to represent in Thailand on August 3.”
Keep that seat warm, Joshua
While he’s zeroed in on the dangerous Balart, Brooks knows that he’s going to meet Pacio sometime down the line, and he urges the Filipino to keep the seat warm for him because he’s headed straight back to the throne.
“Josh and I don’t really talk. We stay cordial. If we bump into each other, it’s like, “Yo, what’s up.” It’s like Jon Jones and [Georges St-Pierre] bumping into each other in that club, it would have the same kind of vibe and energy,” he said.
“But we both know that we’re on the tracks of running into each other again, and I think he is gonna be working very diligently and very hard to keep that belt once and for all. But I got to come through and snatch that again. Might be in the Philippines or in the United States, we’ll see what happens.”
That said, Brooks wants to make sure he gets Balart out of the way as soon as possible, as he intends to lock in that trilogy with Pacio.
“I want to get it done as soon as possible. The way that I thought about it the whole time, we’ve been booked for five months, so we’ve had a lot of preparation, a lot of incubation in understanding what he’s doing. [I’m] super happy to go out and show and perform the way that I want to,” he said.
“I want it to be a first-round knockout, every fighter wants a first-round knockout. But Gustavo has proven again and again and again that in the second and third round, he gasses. And I’m gonna get him in the corner and I’m gonna bully him and I’m gonna make him feel like the younger brother even though he’s older than me.”
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