Seemingly out of nowhere, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight bruiser, Anthony Smith, slugged his way into the No. 3 spot in the promotion’s “official” 205-pound rankings.
The means to that end was a three-fight winning streak featuring wins over two ex-light heavyweight champions (Rashad Evans and Mauricio Rua), as well as a finish over former 205-pound title contender, Volkan Oezdemir.
Sorry, but the soon-to-be light heavyweight, Luke Rockhold, is not impressed.
“Anthony Smith, yeah. I mean, what, (Thiago) Santos came up just recently too. These guys, I’m just not impressed,” Rockhold told Submission Radio. “They’re a little sloppy in so many ways and I see openings and I’m ready to move up. I mean, the rest of the division, there’s a couple of good guys up there, but I don’t see much. I’m ready to come up and I’m ready to shut it down. [Smith] looked like shit. He didn’t look good in his last fight. I’m not gonna say… he looked like a bum, truthfully.”
Smith (31-13) is 7-2 inside the Octagon with six violent finishes.
Rockhold (16-4) is parting ways with the middleweight division after years of grueling weight cuts, the latter of which put the final nail in his 185-pound coffin. The former Strikeforce middleweight champion, 34, expects to make his cage fighting return in March.
Perhaps Smith wouldn’t mind waiting until then to do some shutting down of his own.