For the last five years, color commentator Jimmy Smith has been a fixture in Bellator MMA. He’s called the action since Season 2, and last year signed on for another five years. He also provides color analysis for Premier Championship Boxing, and his time as a professional fighter gives him a keen understanding of the way combat sports operate.
Bellator is currently gearing up for their next big “tentpole” event, Bellator 138: Unfinished Business. The show is headlined by Ken Shamrock vs. Kimbo Slice, but does also contain some legitimate high-level matchups in Patricio “Pitbull” Freire vs. Daniel Weichel, and Michael Chandler vs. Derek Campos.
Ahead of what is sure to be one of Bellator‘s most-watched events, Smith recently spoke to Bleacher Report MMA about a wide range of issues in mixed martial arts, including the injury epidemic, adjustments to training, performance-enhancing drugs, and the UFC’s newly announced drug testing and uniform plans.
In this two-part exclusive, Smith discusses issues currently effecting the sport, as well as some of the biggest upcoming fights in Bellator.
B/R: What are your thoughts on the constant problem of fighter injuries, and the amount of fights we see get changed or cancelled due to injuries?
Jimmy Smith: It’s an epidemic in the sport. It’s one of the things that really separates MMA from other sports. In MMA, a card can completely change within a couple of days, because guys are getting hurt, and it’s because they have to do so much. The training is all over the board.
You have Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, kickboxing and everything, and anything can go wrong. That’s why we have so many knee injuries in the sport, and there are pressures on the body that are just unique to the sport, and I don’t think there’s any way to really avoid it.
B/R: Do you think there needs to be more evolution in training methods for MMA, especially with hard sparring?
Jimmy Smith: There are really two schools of thought. The first one is kind of the Chute Boxe mentality, where if every day is the fight, then the fight won’t be a big deal. Every day should be as close to simulating the fight as possible. I think that kind of thinking has gone by the wayside in the last couple of years, and people are realizing you can only take so many punches, and you can only train so hard for so long, that you might as well fight that in the cage, and not use yourself up in sparring.
The kind of attitude that has gotten more popular in the last couple of years is that you can’t kill yourself in the gym everyday and expect to perform and expect to have a long career. That’s been a real shift I’ve seen in training, how to train hard without using your body up for free in the gym. I think that’s becoming a lot more popular because of the injuries we’re seeing.
B/R: What do you think can be done to replace hard sparring in training, especially at the highest levels of the sport?
Jimmy Smith: Where I see people get hurt a lot of times is mixed sparring. You’re going from striking to takedowns, or to wrestling, and if you’re in the wrong position at the wrong time, it’s really easy to get hurt. You don’t see these kind of injuries in boxing or Muay Thai, because they basically see the same lines all the time. What I’ve seen a lot of guys do is break it up a lot, where they will do just Muai Thai, or just striking, or just wrestling, and they aren’t mixing it up as much guys used to early on in the sport.
B/R: What are your thoughts on the UFC teaming with USADA for their new drug-testing plan?
Jimmy Smith: I think it’s great. I want to see a clean sport, I think everyone does. It’s a secret arms race, and people don’t realize that. Even within the cheaters, the people who are doping, they don’t know how much the other guy is doping. So it’s a secret arms race and it’s really gotten out of control.
Anything that any organization does to keep the sport clean, I’m 100 percent with it. I think the message is getting sent that PEDs will really take time off your career. Your career will be ended or curtailed by a positive test.
It isn’t just a six-month suspension when a lot of guys only fight once every six months anyway. The message is getting across that it will negatively impact your entire career and that it is not worth it. And I think that is huge.
And with a guy like Anderson Silva getting popped, you have to question every single one of his wins. A lot of people think he went from the greatest of all time to a cheater, because of that positive test. They don’t know if he’s been doping the entire time.
And when you see a fighter who was widely considered the best ever to suddenly have this shadow of doubt over his whole career, nobody wants to be that guy.
So I think not only the sanctions by the UFC and USADA, but the social impact of getting caught can also destroy your whole career.
B/R: Michael Chandler recently did an interview where he said that he hopes Bellator follows suit with a comprehensive testing plan of their own. Would you like to see that? And do you feel it is the job of the promotion to test the athletes, or the commission’s responsibility?
Jimmy Smith: The difficulty the UFC has had in the past was saying early on that it was the commission’s problem. “They test, they hand out the suspensions, we honor those suspensions, what else are we supposed to do?” But essentially it’s the sport that suffers. The commissions will go on. They aren’t going to suffer like the UFC or Bellator will suffer. And it is ultimately the people suffering that need to step forward and clean up the sport.
I would love to see a comprehensive Bellator/UFC/WSOF testing plan. That would be fantastic. The problem is that it can be really expensive and not every promotion has the same resources. But I would love to see the “Big Three” in a sense, have a uniform testing policy.
So a fighter can’t test hot in the UFC, get a four-year suspension and then go fight somewhere else. The UFC can only do so much. They can only suspend the guy from the UFC essentially. They can’t hold a guy in perpetuity. So a uniform testing policy would be great.
B/R: What are your thoughts on the UFC’s uniform deal with Reebok?
Jimmy Smith: I can have an opinion, and so can the fans and the pundits. But what ultimately matters is what the fighters think about it. And it has been universally criticized. A lot of fighters aren’t happy about it. You have a system where someone like Gleison Tibau, who has had a ton of fights in the UFC, would make more money than Conor McGregor if it wasn’t a title fight.
And that is insane. A fighter’s drawing power and appeal can’t be quantified by how many fights you’ve had in the UFC. Some guys are superstars after two or three fights, and some guys spend their whole career fighting in one organization and never make it to the top.
The scale is kind of like a tenure system, which in sports doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It’s almost putting a league-type structure on combat sports, which isn’t how combat sports have worked in the past. Some guys come in and are very popular and marketable early on in their career, other fighters don’t.
If you look at the way the system is tiered, how many fights do you have? Ten is a lot, depending on the kind of fights you’re having. Twenty is a ton. This scale can literally be longer than your entire career depending on when you get into the UFC.
B/R: After the specifics of the Reebok deal were announced, Scott Coker said in an interview that his “phone has been ringing.” Do you think that the loss of sponsors will cause a shift of more UFC fighters signing with Bellator?
Jimmy Smith: This makes it a lot easier. It makes it so much easier for Bellator to say “Hey, if we pay you the same amount the UFC will pay you, and allow you to go out and get sponsors,” a lot of fighters I’ve talked to would take that deal.
Before Bellator would have had to sweeten the pot and really give them a better deal, but now if the deal is even close, and you can make up the difference with sponsors, it makes it a lot easier for Bellator to recruit talent.
B/R: What do you think about the changes implemented in Bellator under the leadership of Scott Coker?
Jimmy Smith: Scott Coker brought with him a reputation from Strikeforce and from having been a successful promoter for a long time that Bjorn didn’t have, and fighters know the difference. One of the things you always hear from fighters when they talk about going to Bellator, and discussions with Bellator is “I trust Scott Coker.” He came in with a track record, and has that trust factor with the fighters that wasn’t there before.
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In Part 2 of Bleacher Report’s interview with Smith, he discusses the biggest upcoming fights in the Bellator cage, King Mo, the recent Bellator signing of Phil Davis, and what fights he’s looking forward to the most.
Michael Wellman is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report MMA and all quotes were obtained firsthand.
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