The Ultimate Fighter season 12 winner Jonathan Brookins has revealed in a new interview that he’s considering giving up fighting for good after losing his passion for the sport.
Brookins fought last weekend at the ‘TUF 16 Finale’ against Dustin Poirier, losing via a first round submission, his third loss in five UFC fights, and it’s left the 27 year-old questioning whether his heart is really in it anymore.
“It’s not hard to make a career in the UFC,” Brookins tells the Fightland site. “If you really want it, you can make it happen. I think I just talked myself of really wanting it. I don’t know if I talked myself out of it or if I really don’t want it anymore. That made it tough to keep going and to fight last weekend. I didn’t really have much fight left in me. I kind of hit a dead end.
“I definitely had my mind on other things I wanted to do and pursue. I just stopped believing in the fight business and stopped believing in what it was I was even doing. I just didn’t quite understand. There wasn’t much that I wanted about that (Poirier) fight.”
Brookins is set to travel to India soon in search of spiritual enlightenment, and he admits that depending on how that goes he might never return to fight again.
“All the things I didn’t learn in fighting to better myself I feel like I can explore in this avenue. If it means extra effort or extra solitude, I’m going to pursue this harder than I even pursued fighting. I feel like it could make me a much better fighter, but if it leads me to not fight again, I think I would be okay with that.”
