Anthony Smith and Luke Rockhold have carried on a feud with one another that has been anything but discrete. Some people just do not mix, even if they have never come face to face. The animosity that Smith has for Rockhold was generated by Rockhold’s criticisms of Smith as a fighter and dismissing Smith as a potential threat to him or any legitimate world champion, among other unfavorable remarks. Smith would have loved to be the one to stuff such comments back into Rockhold’s face; but as long as Rockhold was ultimately put in his place, Smith can find satisfaction with that:
“I wanted him to be humbled, and I think that happened,” Smith said in an interview with Submission Radio. “And everything I said was true, and everything he said wasn’t. He said I was a bum and that Gustafsson was gonna walk through me. And he said that I don’t deserve to be in this division. He just moved up because bums like me can get title shots.
“It ain’t that fuckin’ easy. I don’t understand why people look at me and think, ‘Well, if he can do it, I can do it.’ It’s not like that. It’s not that easy. Like, Rockhold wouldn’t make it five seconds fighting the way that I fight. He doesn’t have the ability to do what I do. He doesn’t have the defensive skills. He doesn’t have the footwork. And he doesn’t have the heart. I mean, once he couldn’t take Blachowicz down, he looked like a coward. He was broken and gassed after two and a half minutes. Like, it’s not that easy.
“We just had a perfect example of it, of a former champion, a guy who ran through several people at 185 move up and get starched by a bum, by his words…he said that several times that Blachowicz is a nobody. So I don’t understand how he can keep being so goddamn cocky, because every time he’s like this, it doesn’t work out and he gets embarrassed.”
It wasn’t too long ago that Luke Rockhold was at the top of Anthony Smith’s wish list for potential opponents, but after losing three of his last four fights, including his 205 debut in such devastating fashion, Smith views a potential bout between the two to be practically beyond reach:
“At this point, it’ll take Luke Rockhold two and a half years to get to me. I mean, he’s gonna have to start at the bottom and work his way up, and I know that’s probably not something he’s willing to do because his ego won’t allow it.
“Maybe it is time Luke Rockhold steps away.”
Who do you think would win a fight between Anthony Smith and Luke Rockhold?
