As Jonathan Brookins progresses in his career as a mixed martial artist, he also evolves as a human being.
The UFC featherweight, fresh off a ‘Knockout of the Night’ victory over Vagner Rocha at UFC on FUEL 1, appeared on The MMA Show with Mauro Ranallo today and gave a fascinating, in-depth, and unique view on his philosophies in life as he delves further along his path as a martial artist.
Although he won ‘The Ultimate Fighter: Season 12, Brookins has had an up-and-down career thus far inside the Octagon. He says it was a September 2010 loss to Erik Koch at UFC Fight Night 25 that really put things in perspective for him and changed his whole outlook on life.
While Brookins pressed Koch against the cage for much of the fight, the short bursts of offence that the Roufusport product delivered saw him as the victor in all three judges’ eyes. In a self-admitted lackluster performance, Brookins admits he carried demons into the cage with him that made it a fight against not just his opponent, but himself as well.
“With Koch, it was more personal. Things in my personal life were off-kilter and it led me to walk into the fight half-stepping,” he said. “From that I made it a point to work on myself and my issues outside of the cage and the rest would kind of follow. I kind of had a different mindset going into this Rocha fight and things came out in my favour so I’m pretty happy.”
When asked exactly what changed, Brookins wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.
“It was more like how I supplement my own feelings. I don’t really care too much for parties but I was supplementing my own emotions with substances — anything that was to my liking,” he said. “Everyone has their vices and I had my own and they weren’t necessarily healthy ones. I just kind of had to realize how to conduct a healthier lifestyle for myself that would allow me to remain focused and not take me off my path.”
He admits the fame associated with becoming a mixed martial artists fighting in promotions such as WEC and Bellator may have come a little bit too soon for him, although looking back he believes it all happened for a reason.
“I guess I did kind of enter the sport ready to party at 20 years old. I think those layers (of immaturity) weren’t fully shed,” he said. “I just had to grow up a little bit, but it took some time and some wake up calls. It was just a natural progression. I found myself on the other end of some harsh realities and I had to just wake up a bit.”
Losing is one of those harsh realities, and the loss to Koch definitely dropped him down the ladder in the UFC’s 145-pound division after an otherwise promising start to his career. But they say you learn more about yourself in defeat rather than victory, and along becoming more intimate with the life philosophies of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, Brookins is learning more and more about himself, and he expects what he knows now to help translate to more success, both inside and outside the cage, in the future.
“I’ve kind of made a connection with Bruce Lee like many other marital artists have. For me (his message of adaptation, of being ‘like water’) translates a lot outside the cage,” he said. “As a person you have to adapt to your surroundings, but also adapt to your growth, to the things you’ve understood up to now. You always have to apply new techniques and never stop growing. I’ve now found a real correlation between MMA and life that I never really had before. It allows me to enjoy BJJ more, enjoy each supplemental discipline more now that I can make that correlation between life and martial arts. Each separate martial art becomes more important to me now where as I used to see them as just attacks and if this attack wasn’t the most efficient end-all-be-all — it’s similar to religion. No one is going to be the one to take over and say this is absolute truth because there’s good in all of it. I feel like they should have a mixed religion.”
Clearly matured and armed with knowledge about himself and the world around him that he never had before, expect Brookins to make a major statement in the UFC’s featherweight division in 2012.
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