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Michael Chandler On Will Brooks’ Release: ‘At the End of the Day, They Let Him Go’

May 23, 2016 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
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Michael Chandler spoke with MMAjunkie about Will Brooks’ release from Bellator, which led to him getting a fight against Patricky Freire at Bellator 157 for the now-vacant lightweight title. Some highlights are below:

On Will Brooks being released by Bellator: “No matter which way you look at it, if they didn’t want to keep him or he didn’t want to be there, at the end of the day they let him go. A plus B equals C. If you conduct yourself a certain way in life things happen a certain way, and that’s what happened. … I definitely wanted to avenge the loss to him, so I wanted to be able to fight him again and avenge that loss and win the belt from him, but like I said, this is a crazy industry. Decisions are made every day that people kind of don’t really understand, or they look at sideways and aren’t really sure what happened there. This is one of them. This is just a time in my life where I’m excited to be training, excited to be fighting and blessed with the opportunity June 24th.”

On Brooks not being exciting to fans: “(Brooks is) not very exciting; he’s not kind of a needle-mover. For a champion, he was not the most well-known guy either. You take a Ben Henderson and a Josh Thomson – those are the kind of names in the sport that I want to fight. … It’s interesting circumstances, not necessarily the circumstances I wanted to win the belt under, but it is the present circumstances, so I got to roll with it and win my fight June 24th and I’ll be walking away with the title that night.”

On who he wants to face: “I’m asking for the biggest fights, I wanted Josh Thomson, I wanted Ben Henderson – those are the biggest fights in Bellator, even with the now unemployed guy that was there. That’s just what I kind of wanted to do. That fight is definitely happening. I don’t know if it’s going to be the next fight after winning the title, or two fights, but that fight is definitely happening.”