Anthony Smith announced that his upcoming fight against Zhang Mingyang at UFC Kansas City would be the final appearance of his career, but it turns out retirement has actually been lingering in the back of his head for quite some time.
The problem that plagued the 36-year-old veteran was that he kept pushing back his own timetable to put a finite number of fights left in his career. A professional fighter for pretty much his entire adult life, Smith never faltered when it came his love for the sport, but he also has bigger priorities that really needed his attention.
“I probably stuck around too long already, if we’re being honest,” Smith said with a laugh when speaking to MMA Fighting. “Probably since maybe the second [Ryan] Spann fight, I started telling my team and my family and my wife like I’m having a lot of fun, but it’s just taking up a lot of time. It comes down to being a dad and being a husband and kind of just checking into that part of my life. Not that I’m not checked in, I’m a super involved with everything that goes on. I almost never miss anything. But it’d nice to slow that part of it down and not have that part of the responsibility. That’s kind of when it started.
“I kept saying three or four [more fights] and then that three or four just kept getting pushed back. I’d fight again and it’s like three or four more, and then I’d fight again, and oh probably three or four [more fights]. I said that but didn’t start ticking them off. Then it just got rough. It got rough. It just started to feel like the ups and downs weren’t worth it anymore. I love the fight part of it. There’s nothing I enjoy doing more than walking into the octagon and fighting. It’s everything that surrounds it that I’m not as willing to do anymore.”
Smith pointed specifically at media obligations, traveling for his fights and training camps, which require him to spend more time away from his family, and living in hotels as a huge part of why now really is the right time to walk away.
While he was already contemplating this move long before making the announcement, Smith confessed that losing his coach, best friend and mentor Scott Morton effectively served as the last piece in the puzzle that had to be completed before retiring.
“Once Scotty died, it made it really easy,” Smith said. “This thing is different for me now. It’s not the same. The whole process feels different. My everyday life is different with him gone. Retiring now is easy, because I’m leaving something that doesn’t feel normal anyways, if that makes any sense.
“It doesn’t feel like I’m leaving something that I’ve had and I’ve been holding onto for a really long time because that thing’s already gone. So now I’m just leaving something that’s new anyway.”
Smith ended up fighting just a month after Morton died and he was obviously still grieving such a tremendous loss. The result didn’t go his way with Smith ultimately suffering a second-round TKO loss to Dominick Reyes but don’t expect him to make any excuses about how that fight played out.
In fact, Smith admits the fight was probably the best thing for him at a time when he was still trying to reconcile with Morton’s passing.
“I think I needed that for my own healing,” Smith explained. “I needed to walk that path, walk that road and just get by it. Whether I fought then or a year later, it was going to be the same.
“No, I don’t regret it. I felt way better the next day. Not great, there’s no real healing of getting past it but I carried it better the next day. Maybe I’m a f*cking psychopath, but I carry it better since I got out of that octagon. Whatever I needed to exorcise or whatever, I needed to get out or beat out of me, it worked to some degree.”
It wasn’t terribly long after that loss this past December that Smith made the decision that he was going to come back for one more fight and then call it a career.
That’s when he reached out to the UFC about scheduling that final appearance and he really appreciated the talk he shared with UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell, who was the first person from the promotion to learn about his decision.
“It was a good conversation,” Smith said. “Me and Hunter [Campbell] had a long talk, kind of just about life. I know that the UFC does catch a lot of shit and you don’t read the good articles, you read a lot of the bad — and they were really, really supportive and talked to me just about how I felt and about life and what we were going to do moving forward and what I wanted that to look like.
“I definitely wanted one more. Really because I didn’t want to go out like I did the last one. I’m not even saying I need a guaranteed win. I just wanted more favorable circumstances. I wanted to know. I wanted to do it on my own terms and they were super open and willing to make that happened and were able to get me close to home. It was a great conversation.”
With his final fight booked in April, Smith is obviously already deep in to what is going to be the last training camp of his career but he’s not having second thoughts.
Because he spends so much time discussing the sport through his work as an analyst for the UFC, as well as hosting his own podcast, Smith definitely knows the old joke that MMA fighters never truly retire.
There are dozens of instances where a fighter calls it a career only to announce a comeback weeks, months or sometimes even years later.
Smith understands the skepticism that comes along any time an athlete in his position announces plans for retirement but he promises when he puts down his gloves in Kansas City, there’s not picking them up again.
Well unless it’s a different kind of glove entirely.
“It’s final,” Smith said about his decision. “It’s really just because it’s not about fighting itself. It’s about everything that surrounds it that I’m just not as willing to do anymore. My kids deserve it. My children deserve not to have this thing all the time and just not have me constantly waiting on the next big thing. Really just checking into them. You have to structure your life a certain way when you live this life and I’m ready to just not do that anymore and ready to just to be as close to a normal human as I possibly can.
“Now I’m not saying if there was like an Anderson Silva-Chael Sonnen boxing match in nowhere Brazil that popped up in some years or something that I wouldn’t be willing to do that. But in terms of fighting for a living, and this being my full-time gig, not anymore. No, I’m done.”
I hope this legend gets a proper sendoff. You just know PLENTY of boxing and exhibition fights will be offered to him.
Hes done alright…
Hes gunna get KOed, make an ass of himself and get canned by ESPN.
Thats really done