Anthony Smith didn’t have any particular opponent in mind for his last fight and who he ended up with surprised him at first.
“Lionheart” is set to face Zhang Mingyang at UFC Kansas City on April 26. It’s a matchup that seems odd on paper given their wide gap in octagon experience (Smith has fought 24 times for the UFC and once challenged for the light heavyweight title, Zhang makes just his third UFC appearance), so Smith needed time to figure out the logic behind the booking.
“I didn’t have any suggestions, but I was very shocked with the matchup, for sure,” Smith said on his On Paper podcast. “That wasn’t a bad thing, I just was not expecting that one, but once I kind of looked into him a little bit and sat on it, it makes a lot of sense why they would go in that direction.”
After taking time to consider the reasons why they paired him up with Zhang, who Smith admits he knew little about when the name was floated his way, Smith is at peace with the decision. The 17-year veteran understands the difficulty of finding an opponent for Zhang, a fighter with an 18-6 record still making a name for himself under the UFC banner, and sees why the matchmakers would pick him to test Zhang.
Smith doesn’t subscribe to the idea that he’s simply being set up as a showcase win for the up-and-coming light heavyweight contender.
“I have a lot of conversations with these guys—and if they did, they’re probably not going to tell me—but Mick Maynard and Sean Shelby have always told me that they don’t care who wins,” Smith said. “They want good fights. They want interesting matchups. And they put people in positions and it’s up to you to do what you what you do with it.
“Of course, we can think of people that were favorably matched and put in some better positions than others, but I’ve known Mick Maynard and Sean Shelby and those guys a really long time and they’ve always been pretty straight-up with me, even in times that I don’t like it. They’ve always been very honest and very clear and his explanation was really that [Zhang] is exciting and we don’t know where he is in terms of his skill set and he’s hyper aggressive and hard to match up and they know that I want a fight that’s going to be really exciting, not some boring scrape one out to finish my career. It’s probably going to be a highlight one way or the other and that gives them an opportunity to let me have a fun fight and figure out where he’s at.”
In Smith’s most recent fight at UFC 310, he suffered a second-round knockout loss to Dominick Reyes. Smith entered the contest with a heavy heart as he dealt with the death of close friend and coach Scotty Morton. He went on to record his fifth loss in his past seven fights.
No one would have blamed Smith if he decided to hang up the gloves after the Reyes fight, but Smith feels it’s important to have a proper goodbye from the UFC.
“I didn’t get to conduct myself as if it was the last matchup or as if it was the last fight,” Smith said. “Obviously, I didn’t enjoy training camp at all, but I didn’t get to enjoy training camp knowing this is my first last week of camp. Then you get into fight week, like this is the last fight week and the last weight cut, and I didn’t get an opportunity—and not that I’m not going to see these people again because I do work for the UFC and do a lot of the broadcast stuff—but I didn’t get to tell everyone that helps me, that helps all of us do our jobs, how appreciative I was of what they do. And that’s every single person on the UFC staff. That’s even down to the people that pick you up from the airport, the PI staff that does your meals that you kind of just come and grab them and leave, I don’t know that they get to hear how appreciative people are all the time because it’s just such a rat race.
“But I want to walk through that fight week and weight cut and when you show up to the arena and just know not only is this the last time I have to do this, which there is a little bit of excitement about that, where I get to go on and I’ve got a whole life ahead of me, hopefully.”
As for where Smith’s head is at going into his retirement bout, he hasn’t even had time to process the occasion, especially given how far he has to go to be physically prepared for fight week.
“I really haven’t thought about that part of it too much,” Smith said. “It’s just that I’m fat… so I’ve got to get my weight down and get into shape to start training camp. So that’s really what I’m focused on. I haven’t really gotten too deep into the fight camp feel mentality.”
