Brooks, who has a record of 17-1 and 9-1 BMMA, revealed that his Bellator MMA contract will end this coming July 15th or after 2 more bouts, whichever comes first. However, Brooks said that it looks very unlikely for him to get two fights before his contract ends seeing that his division is already moving forward without him.
The top three lightweight MMA fighters on the lineup already have their respective bouts to prepare on. Benson Henderson is already lined up to fight Andrey Koreshkov for a shot at the welterweight title; Chandler and Josh Thomson, on the other hand, is already scheduled to go head to head for a tentpole match-up this coming May 14th. Brooks said that he fully understands where his teammates are coming from and doesn’t hold any grudge against them.
“It is what it is. Again, I can’t control any of that. I think it is one of those things where I have to be honest with you, and I’ve said it before and I know everybody is probably going to turn it into something where I’m critiquing Bellator — I get it — but do I think it’s one of those things where they’re like, ‘well, shoot, what do we do?’ We have a guy who’s ready to go into free agency, so what do we do with him? Do we put all our money, put all our time into the guy who can possibly leave? Or do we put our energy into the guys who are here? The guys who are trying to prepare to have a long career here, the guys who are signing multi-year, multi-fight contracts?’ And I respect that. I get that. If I was running Bellator, I would do the same thing,” Brooks said.
The MMA fighter further explained that if he was in the shoes of the Bellator executives, he would probably have done the same thing.
“If I had a guy that I knew what probably not going to be with us, who doesn’t feel like he wants to be there anymore, I don’t think I would spend the energy on that guy either, especially if I have other guys who I need to put that energy into. I need to build these other guys. So for them to make the Thomson-Chandler fight, that makes sense. Chandler is a guy who just signed a brand new contract. Thomson just signed a contract and he’s trying to be in [Bellator] for the rest of his career, he’s trying to build the organization and I respect all of that. So it’s just one of those things where I’m just kind of hanging out and seeing what happens,” he added.
The Bellator champ revealed that the MMA promotion recently gave him a really good offer to re-sign with them, to which, he declined because of his “own personal goals”.
“I would like to (fight one more time), but that is also another thing that I can’t control. It comes down to what Bellator decides to do. It comes down to what Scott Coker decides to do. It comes down to if they have somebody to fight me, you know? It’s a whole mix-up of contenders, everybody is looking to somebody else. All of the guys who were screaming about title fights and wanting to fight me, all of a sudden they decided they want to fight other guys. Hopefully somebody figures out exactly what they want to do. I’ll be here,” Brooks added.