Anthony Smith isn’t buying Conor McGregor’s excuse for losing at UFC 264.
The Irishman suffered a nasty leg break in round one of his trilogy fight with Dustin Poirier earlier this month.
McGregor has since claimed that he had pre-existing stress fractures in his leg heading into the fight. The 33-year-olds claim has been met with skepticism by fighters, fans, doctors, and the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Smith says McGregor’s pre-existing injury excuse isn’t valid as all fighters enter the Octagon less than 100 percent.
“Everyone who loses has an excuse. It’s new for Conor to be like that,” Smith said on SiriusXM’s Fight Nation. “I’m not the excuses guy but in my circle, all my friends know what’s going on. They know pre and they know post. Like, ‘I know you’re never gonna say this but what was going on here? I know you’ll never say this publicly because you don’t make excuses.’ And I’ll absolutely tell my friends what’s going on. (They) knew that my hand was broken going into the Glover (Teixeira) fight and I never said anything about it because it’s not an excuse! Glover probably had a broken hand. We all are injured.
“Going into the Jimmy Crute fight – I can talk about it because I won – my leg was f*cked. Totally f*cked. I couldn’t kick almost the entire training camp. I had this huge, huge hematoma and I’m lucky the commission didn’t catch it because I don’t know if they would have even let me fight. The point of that is we’re all banged up going in. The sport is very hard and you put your body – the fight’s the easiest part. Making it through a training camp as uninjured as possible is the tough part.”
‘Lionheart’ is confident Poirier was just as banged up as McGregor heading into UFC 264.
“I would say Conor wasn’t any more hurt than Dustin was going into that fight,” Smith said. “That’s not me saying Conor wasn’t banged up or his legs weren’t bothering him or his shin wasn’t cracked up or whatever, but he wasn’t any more injured that Dustin Poirier was. That’s my perspective at it from an athlete.
“It’s easy for a fan or someone who has never done it to say, ‘Oh, he was hurt.’ We’re all hurt. Every single one of us, every single time we fight. There’s not one person that can ever say they go in 100 percent healthy. So his excuses are very invalid to me. To the general public, it makes sense that they people would buy into that excuse but Conor knows that all of us don’t buy it because we’re all hurt too. That’s how I look at it, but he’s not lobbying to us. It’s to the general public, the buyers, the PPV buyers. Those are the people he needs to convince but he knows he’s never gonna convince us.” (Transcribed by MMA Fighting)
Do you agree with Anthony Smith? Is Conor McGregor’s excuse for losing at UFC 264 invalid?