Jarred Brooks disses Gustavo Balart: “I think that he's a good somebody to go for title eliminators”

Jarred Brooks has always been brutally honest with his ideas, to the point that it may come off as scathing to some who may hear it.

Just take his assessment of strawweight contender Gustavo Balart.

The Cuban Olympic wrestler is one of the best grapplers in ONE Championship and is ranked no.4 in the strawweight rankings. Brooks, however, sees Balart as nothing more than a contender.

In an interview with ONE Championship, the reigning ONE strawweight world champion said Balart has a ceiling to his career and he’ll only break through that proverbial barrier once he fixes some of the areas in his game.

Brooks said:

"I think he’s on a four-fight win streak or whatever. But before that, I saw a lot of holes that he hadn't covered up. So, I think that he's getting away with his speed and in the way that he fights and it's fast. But yeah, like I said, I don’t think Gustavo Balart is a champion or could be a champion. I think that he's a good somebody to go for title eliminators.”

Balart had a slow start to his ONE Championship career going 0-3 in his first three fights.

Despite the early struggle, the 36-year-old dynamo racked up three straight wins, including back-to-back victories against former ONE strawweight world champions Yosuke Saruta and Alex Silva.

As for Brooks, ‘The Monkey God’ will attemp to become a two-sport world champion when he challenges Mikey Musumeci for the ONE flyweight submission grappling world title at ONE Fight Night 13: Allazov vs. Grigorian on Prime Video.

The submission grappling bout goes down this Friday, US primetime, at the iconic Lumpinee Boxing Stadium.

ONE Fight Night 13 is ONE Championship’s eighth Amazon card of the year and will air live and free on Prime Video in North America.