Will Brooks faces Nik Lentz at UFC 217 in October and he needs a victory in a bad way. He has lost two in a row and one more loss could be it for the man who sacrificed so much to get where he is today. In an interview with FightersOnly.com he revealed some pretty shocking truths about what he had to do to live his dream of becoming an MMA fighter.
I am the type of person who has always been willing to do whatever it takes to get to where I want to go. Those were some very hard times. I had a 1998 Dodge Avenger and I was sleeping in that thing just to stay close to the gym. When I was sleeping in my car I needed reading material because there were nights I wasn’t actually sleeping. I went and got BJ Penn’s book of techniques and I was reading it, thinking about how much I wanted to be just like him when I really got into MMA. I went in a different direction with my skills but he was one of the guys I wanted to be able to learn from and just be around, even to just shake his hand.
Some nights I was sleeping in the gym without my coaches knowing. These are the things I decided I needed to do; I wanted to do to get to where I wanted to go. At the time my family had given up on me. I had a lot of dirt under my nails. Nobody wanted to deal with it. Everybody was sick of me breaking and wrecking everything. I just wasn’t a great person to be around at the time. I needed to make some changes in my life. When no one is around you do what you need to do to make it. I had a few problems and I was able to battle through them.
One night I got so desperate I had locked myself out of my car and had to find a place to sleep. I was walking by a Barnes and Noble bookstore, they were closing the store down, it was freezing cold, I had no cell phone to call anyone, and I had no money. I pulled the door open and slept in there. I was doing everything I possibly could do become great, to do this interview with you, to compete against guys I’ve competed against. I did some things that I don’t want to get into but I’m still trying to wash it off my hands. You have to endure. You have to do it on your own.
I didn’t want to turn around and ask everyone for help. When the help isn’t there to be found, you dig deep. That’s what I’m trying to share with the fans. I want people to know what I’ve been through and realise you can overcome when you just bite down and you just don’t take it; you don’t take some of the negative things that happen to us. It’s going to hurt for a little bit but you have to believe that, at the end of the day, something positive will come from all the pain, the heartache, the sadness, the sacrifice and hard work. Everything I have now came from hard work.
He lost to both Alex and Charles Oliveira who are not related, but it does seem to indicate that Will’s Kryptonite is that last name.