No. 5 ranked strawweight contender Danial Williams expected Jarred Brooks and Joshua Pacio to go the distance in their ONE 164 world title fight.
Pacio stepped into the circle in the main event of ONE Championship’s final event of 2022 to defend his strawweight crown against ‘The Monkey God’ Jarred Brooks. Through 25 minutes, Brooks delivered a dominant performance as Pacio was unable to get any real offense going. In the end, the American was awarded the victory via a unanimous decision, taking 26.4 pounds of gold back to the United States.
Division standout Danial Williams shared his thoughts on the main event clash in an interview with ONE Championship:
“Analyzing it when you’re watching it and seeing what they’re doing and seeing how they’ve done in other fights that I’ve seen them on. A bit of studying and a little bit of entertainment, too. I did expect it to go the distance. I didn’t think one would stop the other with their styles. It actually went to how I thought it would be, with Brooks taking the decision.”
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Williams continued, saying:
“I was impressed by Pacio, like the level of competition of Brooks has fought and how active he’s been. He’s on a roll. Props to both of them, man. Talk about game, that’s where all the strawweights are looking at."
Danial Williams has big plans for 2023, including two world championship reigns
If Danial Williams gets his way, he’ll compete for not one, but two ONE world championships in 2022. As the No. 5 ranked contender in both MMA and Muay Thai, ‘Mini T’ hopes to parlay that into a shot at gold against current ONE strawweight Muay Thai world champion, Joseph ‘The Hurricane’ Lasiri:
“I definitely want the [ONE Strawweight] Muay Thai [World Title] belt. I feel that’s mine for the taking this year. In a perfect world, it would be a Muay Thai World Title fight, then a champion-versus-champion fight with kickboxing.”
Once Williams has accomplished his goal of becoming a two-sport world champion, he has a score to settle with streaking strawweight Jeremy Miado:
“And then the Miado rematch. That would be the ultimate 2023.”
Williams’ last appearance inside the circle came against Miado at ONE on Prime Video 3 in October. Miado scored a third-round knockout against ‘Mini T’ to extend his win streak to four.