The season nine Bellator MMA lightweight tournament begins on Friday night at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon and one of the eight men in this tournament will be Will Brooks.
Brooks (10-1) made his Bellator debut in the season eight lightweight tournament and made it to the semifinal round before being defeated by Saad Awad.
Following his defeat to Awad, Bellator decided to give Brooks another fight before putting him back in the tournament and that took place at Bellator 97 at Cris Leyva.
After the second round of his fight against Leyva, American Top Team head coach Ricardo Liborio had some words for his fighter and Brooks went out to get the finish at the 2:20 mark of the round.
“Coach Liborio said some thing to me that got me going and made me understand it was time to get real and put the finishing touch on the fight,” Brooks told TheMMAReport.com. “For me, I was focus on just getting the win and getting back into the Bellator tournament. I wasn’t really focused on doing to much to be entertaining to others. I was mainly focused on my main goal and I went away from the game plan that we had and I think it upset coach Liborio a little bit and he had to let me know that I needed to get my head out of my rear end. I went back out there and getting the finish.”
Following the victory, Bellator MMA announced that Brooks would be one of the eight men in the season nine tournament. Many fighters that get a second opportunity in the Bellator tournament always say that they learned lessons from the previous tournament and that is no different from Brooks.
“One of the things that I took from the last tournament is just making sure I am not being complacent,” Brooks said. “I got very comfortable with the amount of success as far as my career was going and I really think that is what got the best of me is being complacent. I’ve been blinded by my own ambition. I was very much focused getting to the next round and fighting Michael Chandler for the belt and just not really thinking about every fight that was ahead of me before that one. I think that was one thing that got the best of me and these last few months I have had a lot of coaching and a lot of mentors around me. Making sure I am mentally prepared, not just physically prepared but mentally ready to be ambitious but also focus on the task at hand and that is taking one fight at a time.”
His opponent on Friday night will be former UFC fighter John Alessio (34-16, 1NC). This will be the Bellator debut for Alessio and Brooks believes the biggest strength that Alessio has is boxing but he is more focused on what he is doing.
“I believe he has very fast hands. I think he very sharp boxing. From some of the fights I have seen, I have seen him progress as far as his boxing goes and he focuses very much on his boxing now and thats something I believe for me it’s going to be an obstacle that i feel like I’m very much prepared to get by. I have trained every aspect of mixed martial arts and really focused on everything as far as striking, wrestling and jiu-jitsu. The best thing for me as far as John Alessio goes, just go in there and have an idea being devastating in every aspect of mixed martial arts. I haven’t focused on John Alessio very much. I am only focusing on what I am going to do.”
While a potential rematch could take place against Awad in the semifinals, Brooks is not thinking about that as he is only thinking about his fight on Friday night against Alessio.
“The only person I can think about is fighting John Alessio. If I start thinking about I want a rematch with such and such, who beat me, that gets away from my main goal which is to focus on one fight at a time. My main focus has been John Alessio and fighting this fight right now. Not even looking at as a tournament. Looking at it as another fight on my record. It’s another fight that is apart of my job and that is where I have mentally been at.”