Anthony Smith explains why fighters are so ‘sensitive’ when it comes to criticism

When it comes to his job, Anthony Smith still considers himself a fighter first, but he’s also crossed over to become one of the top analysts in MMA and a well-known podcast host alongside UFC Hall of Famer Michael Bisping.

With a microphone in front of his face, Smith knows part of his occupation involves breaking down fights, giving predictions, and offering criticism toward other fighters whenever that’s warranted. Giving his opinion is part of the reason why Smith has become such a popular fixture on UFC broadcasts.

Despite plenty of credentials to back up whatever he’s saying, Smith still faces blowback for some of his hottest takes, but he’s come to understand that’s just part of the business. In fact, he knows from personal experience that even he was guilty of letting something as minor as a fighter or journalist picking an opponent to win get to him before a fight.

“It happens to me a little bit too, I get in my feelings a little bit,” Smith, who faces Carlos Ulberg on short notice at UFC 303, told MMA Fighting. “It’s because fighters are so tied to fighting. Fighting, it’s not so much this way for me anymore, but fighting used to be my identity. So if you picked against me in a fight and said, ‘Well, I think this guy’s going to beat him,’ I felt like you were attacking me personally. Like my core of who I am as a person.”

Over the years and through a lot of experience, Smith learned to shut out some of the criticism coming his way, particularly because he now has to dish it out as part of his job.

That’s why he recommends that fighters learn to lower the volume and shut out the noise, or they’ll spend all day and all night seething over whatever is said about them.

“I think fighters do better if they can [detach] a little bit,” Smith said. “I know fighters that are so in tune with what’s being said about them that it affects their day to day. You’ve got to [detach] from that a little bit. But to answer your question, they’re a little bit sensitive.”

Smith knows there’s going to be times when he offers his take on a fight or a fighter and somebody is going to disagree with him. That’s kind of the whole point about an opinion.

He understands that’s just the nature of the beast, although Smith admits he definitely caught a few side glances during a recent trip to Las Vegas when he worked at UFC 300.

“I walked into Xtreme Couture and I could see a bunch of people licking their chops like, ‘Here’s our f*cking chance. We’re going to make him answer for that shit!’” Smith said with a laugh.

Thanks to the world’s voracious appetite to consume as much content in as little time as possible, Smith expects that a lot of what he says during a 40-minute interview or a two-hour podcast will get misconstrued or taken out of context. Ideally, he would prefer that wouldn’t happen, because those are often the instances where somebody gets upset about a comment he made that became headline material.

That being said, Smith concedes those situations are going to happen whether he likes it or not, which includes recent comments he made about UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira.

“People don’t listen to everything that we say,” Smith said. “They’re going to clip this part right here, they’re going to say, ‘Anthony Smith said that Alex Pereira, all the kickboxing practitioners and analysts in the world says that everything he does is wrong.’ That’s what they’re going to clip and that’s how they’re going to make it seem. That’s not what I mean at all.

“I think everything he does, he’s very effective. He finds a way to land the shots that he needs to land. Insanely powerful. I don’t know where the f*ck that comes from. That’s different. I’m telling you, me and Jamahal [Hill] have been in there for some rounds and I have put straight bombs on him, here and there, and he doesn’t even blink. Like it’s not even a big deal, and [Pereira] was able to hurt Jamahal.”

When it comes to fighters getting angry with him over something said on a podcast or interview, Smith promises he’s not out to hurt anybody, but he’d be doing a disservice to UFC fans if he didn’t give his honest, unabashed opinion.

“It doesn’t really hurt my feelings too much,” Smith said. “But you don’t really see a lot of those guys jumping at opportunities to hang go have dinner with Michael Bisping and me.”

Because he wears a lot of different hats in the fight game, Smith can’t just call himself a fighter anymore.

As an analyst and podcast host, Smith now participates among the media, which often times draws the ire of UFC CEO Dana White. In fact, White recently posted a video showcasing a few influencers and personalities that didn’t think UFC 300 lived up to expectations before the event took place.

Smith admits he held his breath a little bit watching that video because he thought for a split second maybe he’d end up on that reel.

“Very candidly, while that video was playing, I got very nervous,” Smith said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, if I get f*cking dunked on right here with everybody else, I’m going to be pissed.’ It was only because I wasn’t critical of anything on the card at all.

“The only thing I could think that could have been taken as negativity, and it would have been accidental, was when that [main event] was announced, I think we were all expecting like eight midgets versus Brock Lesnar or Brock versus Ronda [Rousey], like something absolutely insane that wasn’t expected. I think the only thing I said was, ‘It’s a great fight, it’s not what I was expecting,’ because I was expecting Dana to drop something unexpected.”