Anthony Smith eliminated distractions heading into UFC on ESPN 18

Back at Wednesday’s UFC on ESPN 18 virtual media dat, Anthony Smith didn’t know he’d be fighting in his seventh straight main event.

“Lionheart” was scheduled to meet Devin Clark in the light heavyweight co-feature bout Saturday night at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.

Friday, however, the originally scheduled headliner fell out after Curtis Blaydes tested positive for COVID-19, which canceled his fight with Derrick Lewis. That propelled Smith (33-16 MMA, 8-6 UFC) vs. Clark (12-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) into three-round feature status.

And that change only more potency to Smith’s words during media day.

A fierce competitor, Smith went on a plucky run to a title shot, where he lost to Jon Jones at UFC 250. Since then, things went sideways, as a win over Alexander Gustafsson was followed by a one-sided loss to Glover Teixeira and an unexpected defeat to Aleksander Rakic.

So, before he even knew he’d have the main event spotlight on ESPN, Smith had already pulled back on his outside duties, which include his astute work as a studio commentator.

“I did a lot of things this training camp differently,” Smith said. “And maybe the average person, it wouldn’t seem that much different but you guys didn’t see me working the analyst desk this entire training camp. If you’re a listener to my radio show, I only did one hour, once a week on my radio show. I cut way back on my show. I didn’t do any episodes of my podcast with Laura Sanko. I just took a lot of things off my plate and fortunately, I have a lot of people that support me that helped picked up the slack on that and picked up the pieces I’m not doing.”

With the benefit of hindsight, maybe Smith wouldn’t have accepted the fight with Teixeira, one in which he went into the fifth round before the bout was waved off, but not before he took significant damage.

“I don’t have it in me to say that I can’t do something. Even going into the Glover [Teixeira] fight right after the home invasion during the pandemic thing, family’s in shambles, whatever, maybe it would have been the more manly thing to do to just say, ‘Hey listen I’m having some serious issues at home, I can’t do this right now.’ But that means I would actually have to say it out loud that I can’t do it, and I’m not built like that. My brain is just not wired like that.”

There are no do-overs on the past. But Smith put himself in the best position he can to get back on track, with an approach that could well pay off in a fight that’s now a main event.

“You get so much going on in your head,” Smith said. “I’m married, I’m a father of three, you’ve got all the duties and the responsibilities that come along with that on top of training camp and again all those other things I had on my plate, analyst stuff, podcast, my radio show. I just needed to manage that and organize it better and I think I did a really good job of that this training camp.”