Just over a year ago, Anthony Smith got a second chance to face Glover Teixeira, this time in a lower stakes grappling event. This happened three years after their UFC fight, a brutal and bloody affair in which Teixeira paused mid-fight to apologize to Smith while he was literally pulling out Smith’s teeth.
You might think that this experience wouldn’t form the basis for any kind of friendship, but the world of MMA can often be strange, and so when Teixeira invited Smith to have a drink with him in the hotel lounge after the wrestling match , Smith was . He was also glad he did it because they ended up talking about the fights. Teixeira’s fights. Smith’s struggles. The general struggles of the professional wrestler trying to win in an unforgiving world and so on.
As they talked, Smith realized that what Teixeira was telling him was important. But he also realized that he still didn’t know what to do with it.
“He was giving me some advice and some of it was immediately helpful and I completely understood what he meant,” Smith told Yahoo Sports. “And some of it, I don’t know, took a while. I think he had to cook. And now I’m starting to think, OK, I see what he means.
The advice, you could say, was especially aimed at a fighter of a certain age. It also mainly applies to a fighter in a certain position. You reach your mid-thirties, with a failed attempt at the UFC title in the rearview mirror, and you can start to get discouraged. You may wonder if this will happen to you, if you will ever be a world champion. And once you start fixating on that, Teixeira highlighted, thinking too much about the future and trying to chart a specific path to the belt, you can get into serious trouble.
“You look at [Teixeira] when I fought him, he didn’t focus on anything else,” Smith said. “He was just trying to win one fight and then win the next one. Then he finds himself in a title fight, and now he’s one of those guys with a belt in the trophy case, when maybe he was someone that people wrote off later in his career.”
You can see how this example might resonate with Smith right now. At 35, he has lost three of his last four. His only title fight resulted in a decision loss to Jon Jones in 2019. His last time out, he tried to gain momentum by taking an extremely short-notice fight against UFC gold medalist Khalil Rountree Jr.
“I lied to everyone before that fight,” Smith said. “Of course I lied. Like, ‘Oh, have you been training?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course, I’ve been training.’ But no, I fought Ryan Spann on August 26th. I didn’t have any training, not a single training session since then, until I accepted the fight against Khalil 10 days in advance. So of course this is going to look bad. I looked like shit. I was a little chubby. I was out of shape. And I still think I did well to get off the couch and fight a guy like Khalil.”
At Saturday’s UFC 301 (10 p.m. ET, ESPN+ PPV), Smith faces undefeated Vitor Petrino in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Petrino is almost a decade younger, still fresh-faced and eager to make his mark in the UFC. He asked for Smith’s name after his last win, and Smith said he went to UFC matchmaker Mick Maynard as soon as he heard that and said he would take the fight.
To outside observers, this seems like a familiar story unfolding. The older fighter, at the back of his career, faces young men on the rise. Certainly the oddsmakers seem to think they have it all figured out, as they installed Petrino as a 3-1 favorite from the start. These odds have only increased since then, with Petrino now approaches 6-1 at BetMGM as fight night approaches.
Smith also works as an on-air commentator for the UFC, so he’s learned not to take things like this personally.
“When the UFC or any promoter is booking fights, you are in one of two positions,” Smith said. “You’re either the guy they want to build or you’re the guy they want to use to build someone else. But if you go in there and pass or fail the test, you can move from one position to another.”
The issue is that time may be running out. Teixeira was 42 years old when he won the UFC title. He was also the oldest title winner in UFC history. In other words, his story seems to be the exception and not the rule.
The way many fans most often encounter Smith these days is as a commentator, analyst and podcaster. He’s become one of those omnipresent talking heads of this sport, and he’s good at it. He’s good enough at it, actually, that it’s not uncommon for fans to wonder out loud why he doesn’t hang up the gloves and just focus on a career on the other side of the chain link.
To these people, it probably seems like good and possibly even obvious career advice. For Smith, it feels a little like admitting that the dream is dead, that he’ll never be UFC champion, that he’s gone as far as he can. Could he accept this possibility without letting it consume him from the inside out? That’s the part that’s still hard to answer, as he faces the prospect of being some new young fighter’s springboard to the top.
“I used to believe that I would never be happy without [a UFC title],” said Smith. “But I think maybe I’ve changed my mindset. I don’t know. I really want this, but if I allow myself to consider the possibility that I won’t get it, I have to accept that. (…) I think as I get older, it’s easier to sit back and look at this life that I built for my family out of nothing. I started from nothing. So I have to be proud of that. It’s only fair to them and everyone around me that I’m proud of it. And when I think like that, yeah, I think I’ll be okay with that.”
