Michael Bisping didn’t hold back when advising his good friend Anthony Smith on how to handle his career.
Smith (37-19 MMA, 12-9 UFC) stepped in on two weeks’ notice to face Khalil Rountree (13-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC) in the UFC Fight Night 233 co-main event this past December. He was stopped by third-round TKO.
Bisping can’t understand why Smith opted to take the fight. He saw it as a high risk, low reward move.
“I’m happy to hear that you still want to fight, but if you want to fight, you’ve got to be a little more meticulous about it, if you don’t mind me saying,” Bisping said on his “Believe You Me” podcast. “I’ll be honest: I said it when we watched the fight on the live (broadcast), and I didn’t want to go into it because it’s like I was betraying you or whatever. I hated it. I was on a walk – I think it was Thanksgiving day when I got the message – and I found out you were fighting. I hated it.
“I f*cking hated it. I didn’t understand it. You’re a fighter, 100 percent, and you’ve got balls of steel. You’re like, ‘F*ck it, let’s go. I can do this.’ I think with the trend lately of people stepping up on short notice, Tom Aspinall going out there and doing it, and Volkanovski stepping up. All right, he lost. But it’s been kind of a thing, people stepping up on short notice. You only really do that when there’s something worth risking it for. I did it, but that was a title fight. I didn’t understand it because you gained nothing from that.”
Smith admitted that his ego got in the way, and his pride wasn’t going to let him turn down the opportunity. “Lionheart” was criticized in the past by Daniel Cormier for not taking the disqualification win in his title fight vs. Jon Jones when he was illegally kneed in the head.
Moving forward, Bisping urged Smith to be more mindful of his decisions.
“You’ve just got to be more professional with it, as you say, in between camps with your weight and stuff like that leading up to fights and just making the correct choices,” Bisping said. “I would love to see you fight on a full camp against Khalil – and we can’t take away from Khalil’s performance. He did tremendous. But the purpose of a fight camp is not only to get you in shape, it’s to get you mentally ready, as well.”
