Anthony Smith returns to the octagon this Wednesday, focused solely on opponent Glover Teixeira. Their light heavyweight title headlines the UFC Jacksonville Fight Night card, the second of three UFC events in the span of eight days.
While his focus is on Teixeira, asked who should face Jon Jones next, Smith, rather reluctantly, gave Dominick Reyes the nod. “As much as it pains me to say it, I think Dominick Reyes deserves a rematch.”
In way of explanation, Smith opined that “I think he did everything he’s supposed to do. He went out there, he busted his ass, and gave Jon all he could handle. If you ask ten people, I think the majority of those people would say Jon Jones lost that fight.”
Reyes and Jones faced off earlier this year, at UFC 247. By all accounts, it was a closed fight. One of Jones’ toughest. Jan Blachowicz, said Smith, also deserves a title shot. “But I think Reyes’ claim to it is a little bit stronger.”
“Lionheart” Smith tends to be an athlete with something of a chip on his shoulder, when it comes to fights anyway. But as Smith explained at Monday’s UFC Jacksonville virtual media day, that is driven mainly by self-doubt.
“I think I’ve always kind of fought like that. I don’t drink my own Kool-Aid, I don’t believe my own hype,” he stated. “I think a lot of it is, I’m always trying to prove something to myself. To be honest with you, there’s a lot of times I think I don’t belong. Sometimes it’s shocking that I’m still here, or that I’ve made it to this point.”
“It leaves me with this feeling of having to grind to continue to earn it and continue to push forward,” Smith continued. “I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be in this position. I’m a small-town Nebraska dude that didn’t have sh*t going for him. I didn’t even graduate high school. Sometimes, it’s like ‘what the f*ck am I doing here?’ So I need to keep earning that, and keep working towards that, and keep making sure that no one takes that from me.”
That, said Smith, is where the chip on his shoulder comes from.
