The best advice Anthony Smith has ever received came from an “old man” he used to train with in Omaha, Nebraska — more than 10 years ago.
Smith, 30, was barely an amateur at the time. He had very little training and was mostly accepting bouts just so he could get into a fight without getting into trouble for it.
He was eager to learn, but it didn’t come easy. Jiu-jitsu, especially, was like a foreign language to Smith. That “old man,” one of Smith’s first training partners, told him whatever didn’t make sense then would make sense eventually. And when it did, he would be something special.
“An old man told me a long time ago, ‘Someday, things are going to click out of nowhere and just make sense,'” Smith told ESPN. “He said it could happen in the shower, when you’re driving, or in the gym — but it’s just going to click, and you’ll be unstoppable.
“And it happened. It happened during the training camp for Rashad Evans. I feel like a different person, like something in my brain turned. It’s been the most satisfying thing in the world, to sit back and know this is all the stuff I’ve been telling myself for 10 years I was capable of doing. I almost don’t want to enjoy it, because I don’t want it to be over. It’s cool to say, ‘All right, this is going well,’ but then I put my head back down.”
Smith (30-13) will meet Volkan Oezdemir (15-2) in the main event of UFC Fight Night on Saturday in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. The Nebraska native has been fighting professionally for more than a decade, but his career has really only “clicked” within the past four months.
After starting 2018 with a TKO loss to middleweight contender Thiago Santos, Smith decided to move up to light heavyweight. He’s 2-0 since, with vicious first-round knockouts against former champions Evans and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
Smith credits ditching the weight cut to 185 pounds as a big reason for his recent success, but some have questioned how much Evans and Rua had left when he fought them. He’s looking forward to making a statement against Oezdemir, a former title challenger in his prime.
“I know there have been a lot of, I don’t want to say doubters, but there are people who are curious how I’m going to do against a guy my own age,” Smith said. “Which is really, really funny to me. All these years, I’ve been fighting hammers. I fight two guys who are older than me, and all of a sudden I’m on the [older legends] tour, you know what I mean? It’s just crazy how short people’s memories are.”
Smith’s quick rise in a new division is coming at a perfect time. Defending champion Daniel Cormier is expected to vacate or be stripped of his title in December, when Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson meet for a vacant title at UFC 232.
Smith is happy to see Jones, arguably the greatest fighter of all time, return to the division, but has been outspoken against the way the United States Anti-Doping Agency handled the former champion’s failed drug test last year. The USADA determined that Jones did not intentionally cheat, despite the presence of a banned substance in his system, and reduced a potential four-year suspension to 15 months.
Smith is convinced he will face Jones at some point, most likely in 2019, and acknowledges he doesn’t have faith in the anti-doping system as it is now. From a strictly competitive standpoint, however, Smith has never felt more confident in his ability to beat an opponent like Jones.
“The point is, I plan on being across the Octagon from Jon Jones in the near future — the very near future — and Jon Jones is already dangerous,” Smith said. “I’d like to feel comfortable we’re on an even playing field, and at this point, I’m not.
“But I plan on starching Volkan Oezdemir and taking a title shot in my next fight. Once I made the move away from 185, everything has come together. My mental and physical capacities came together.”