Las Vegas — Back in June, former light heavyweight title challenger Dominick Reyes earned his first win since 2019.
He’ll look to follow up that knockout of Dustin Jacoby against another ex-title challenger, Anthony “Lionheart” Smith, at UFC 310 this Saturday.
“It’s how it should be. I fight, I win, and I fight again,” Reyes (13-4) told media outlets including Cageside Press during Wednesday’s media day.
“The cool thing about winning, you don’t feel like you have to go home and make all these changes and do all these adjustments. Yeah, adjustments need to be made, always, but it’s not like like I have to start over and like ‘oh man, we have to fix what went wrong,’ we’ve got to do all these things.”
“So it’s really nice. It’s really nice to just know that what you were doing was the right thing, and you just stay on track,” he continued. “You keep building, and you get stronger and stronger and stronger. Mentally, I’m at a very, very good place. I’m not back, I’m better.”
Smith is a veteran of MMA, a veteran of the UFC, and is nearing sixty professional fights at just age 36. The match-up with “Lionheart” is one Reyes has expected for a while, given that between the two of them, they’ve fought just about everyone there is to fight in the promotion’s light heavyweight division the past ten years.
“We’ve kind of been just circling around each other this whole time, aware of each other. We’ve had a few interactions where it was like ‘hey man, nice to meet you, we’re going to fight one day and it’s going to be awesome.’ At the end of the day, we’re just two men trying to feed our families.”
Pleasantries aside, however, the name value of Smith is also a trophy of sorts to Reyes. “He’s not an up-and-comer, he’s a name. He’s already established as who he is. So I do look forward to fighting Anthony, and then having his name on my mantle, I guess you could say.”
Watch the full UFC 310 media day appearance by Dominick Reyes above.
