Jarred Brooks vs. Joshua Pacio part III will finally settle the score between the two rivals for the ONE Strawweight MMA World Championship at ONE 171: Qatar.
ONE Interim Strawweight MMA World Champion Jarred “The Monkey God” Brooks promises that nothing’s going to stop him from winning once he gets inside the Circle with reigning divisional king Joshua “The Passion” Pacio.
The bitter rivals will wrap up their trilogy when they square off for the undisputed ONE Strawweight MMA World Championship in the main event of ONE 171: Qatar Thursday, February 20, at Lusail Sports Arena in Doha.
Brooks knows the magnitude of this fight, as it will dictate the trajectory of the division moving forward. With that, he promises that it’s not him who will be yielding in this match.
“Yeah, this is it. We're gonna go at it, and I'm gonna fight to the death,” he said.
“You can poke my eye out. You can take my arm. You can take my leg. I’m still gonna crawl forward. There's nothing that's gonna stop me from getting what's mine at the end of the day.”
Brooks is also done projecting. Whatever he’s said, or will say moving forward, is what he truly feels. And he doesn’t care how people might take it anymore.
“People see me as crying, talking the way that I talk, or whatever. I'm me at the end of the day and I'm me unapologetically. If I say it, I'm gonna do it and I hold myself accountable to those words,” he said.
“So anybody that's ever said that I was cringe or anything in interviews, that's me. I don't care if you call me cringe. I'm telling myself, I'm manifesting to myself, and I'm giving myself power by saying that.”
Because for him, this fight is personal. It’s not because he has any ill will for Pacio, or the other way around. It’s because of the implications of this match for his career, and his livelihood.
So he plans to leave behind Pacio for good this time by removing him from the strawweight picture.
“I don't even call myself ‘The Monkey God’ right now. I think that this is me, period, as a person. This is very personal for me as a fighter, and this is personal for Joshua, I'm guessing as well, because we just have so much history,” he said.
“But this is definitely more personal for me. This is about my family, and this is about my family's future, and I think that the only way to get that future is to eliminate the task at hand, which is Joshua Pacio.”