“That’s my problem. These referees are so afraid to take the heat,” Anthony Smith blames the referee for the event that happened at UFC 259
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Following the controversial events of UFC 259 in which Petr Yan landed an illegal knee to Aljamain Sterling and lost his title is a very hot topic of conversation in the MMA community right now.
Now a person who has the first-hand experience for getting hit by an illegal shot, Anthony Smith has spoken up.
In a recent interview he said, “Because it’s illegal you don’t have the balls to stop the fight and not put Aljo in a position where he has to make that decision? That’s my problem. These referees are so afraid to take heat. They don’t want to insert themselves in the fight. Well, godd*mmit when someone breaks the rules, that’s your job.”
“Cause if you’re not going to do that, let’s be very honest here, we don’t need you. We police ourselves in the gym, hard sparring, damn near fighting every single day. We can have someone outside hold the timer and if I low blow you, 99 percent of the time I’ll just stop and say ‘my bad.’ Maybe eye pokes are a little bit different because you don’t always know when someone gets poked in the eye. You don’t always know feel it when you poke someone all the time.”
“Acting or not, he looked like a person that couldn’t fight,” says Anthony Smith
He further added, “Acting or not, he looked like a person that couldn’t fight,” Smith said about Sterling. “Regardless of whether it was acting or not. But that’s the point. That’s why I don’t think how genuine that was matters. What you’re looking at is a person that didn’t look like he could fight.”
“I could see that from my couch on Copper Mountain in Colorado. If you can’t see that standing next to him, then there’s a bigger problem here. It goes right back to the same argument I have with people getting upset that corners aren’t stopping fights.”
Also read: Georges St-Pierre reveals his pick for MMA Mount Rushmore.
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Suryansh Thakur
(1600 Articles Published)