MANILA, February 25 ------ While training for his highly-anticipated trilogy bout against Jarred Brooks, Filipino MMA star Joshua Pacio took a big risk that paid off in a major way. Proving that practice makes perfect, Pacio put himself to the test during his sparring sessions. There, he was put in precarious positions and choked on a daily basis. His regimen was rewarded when he defeated Brooks in co-main event of ONE 171: Qatar last Thursday at the Lusail Sports Arena in Doha, allowing him to unify the ONE Strawweight MMA World Title.
The Lions Nation MMA representative endured relentless pressure from Brooks in the first round. He survived a bevy of chokes from the American before responding in kind in the second round with suffocating pressure of his own to get the TKO win. For "The Passion," he wouldn’t have survived those submission attempts if he hadn’t been consistently choked by #2-ranked bantamweight MMA contender Stephen Loman during training sessions. "The D'arce [was] not actually close, maybe the guillotine and the last one [was] like 70 percent. But you know, there's a lot of guys choking me out in the gym. I've been there a hundred times in that position, and I know the feeling," he said. "I'm used to it. Imagine Stephen Loman choking me every day in the gym."
Pacio had entered the bout as a massive underdog, but he never succumbed to self doubt. "I'm confident in my training, in my preparation. Every position we studied in training camp, every position that Jarred [would] do to me. You know, lots of hours, we drilled it. Situational, we drilled it," he said. "My jiu-jitsu coach, my wrestling coach, we've been working on every position that Jarred [would] do. So I [was] very confident that wherever the fight [went], ground, stand up, I'd [be] very confident."
Source: news.abs-cbn.com
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