UFC fighter Smith takes a beating, loses tooth, then hands it to ref
JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — UFC lightheavyweight contender Anthony (Lionheart) Smith lived up to his nickname Wednesday, taking a beating that included him handing one of his teeth to the referee midfight.
“My teeth are falling out,” a battered Smith told his corner after the fourth round.
Glover Teixeira, ranked No. 8 among 205-pound contenders, stopped No. 4 Smith in the fifth round in a brutal fight that saw a candid exchange caught by the microphone in the empty VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena after a bloodied Smith offered the tooth to referee Jason Herzog.
Teixeira, on top and punching Smith at the time, said: “Sorry, Anthony, it’s part of the job.” “What?” replied Smith. “Sorry. Part of the job,” said Teixeira.
“Yeah. It is what it is,” said Smith.
The fight was stopped at 1:04 of the fifth round with Teixeira on top, dishing out punishment. Smith was taken to hospital. Teixeira, who said later he thought he had broken his right hand in the bout, won a bonus for performance of the night.
ESPN reported that, in addition to losing two teeth, Smith suffered a broken nose, broken orbital bone and a cut under his right eye.
The heavy-handed Teixeira held a 138-86 edge in significant strikes throughout the fight, according to UFC Stats.
“Us sitting on the outside, it was a little tough to watch,” UFC president Dana White said after the fight.
Teixeira hurt Smith early in the fourth round with a huge uppercut.
And he absorbed more punishment.
About 90 seconds into the round, with Smith on his knees and Teixeira on top trying to secure a choke, Smith handed the tooth to Herzog. White was watching on a monitor ringside.
“He was picking up his teeth and giving his teeth to the referee and the referee was putting them in his pocket. It was crazy,” said White.
Many thought the fight should have been stopped earlier.
“I was shocked that he came out for the fifth,” White said after the fight. “I didn’t think he would come out for the fifth. I thought his corner would have stopped it.
“I’m no doctor but I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t have a broken orbital,” he said. “Because every time he got punched, he reacted.”
White said Herzog could have stopped the fight in the fourth round.
Smith said he had no problem with either the referee or his corner.
“When the ref made it clear he needed to see something or he was going to stop it, I did what I had to do to stay in the fight,” he told ESPN. “I come out of battle with my shield or I come out on it. That’s my rule. Period.”
Former two-division champion Daniel Cormier, part of the UFC’s commentary team, disagreed.
“Sometimes you’ve got to save the fighter ... This didn’t need to happen like this to Anthony Smith,” Cormier said.
The 40-year-old Teixeira walked out to “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses. Smith followed to the strains of Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack.”
The 31-year-old Smith (3315-0) was faster from the get-go, controlling the early exchanges with his jab and kicks against the 40-year-old Teixeira (317-0).
The tide changed as the fight wore on.
Teixeira took some damage around the left eye but rallied to punish Smith at the fence. Teixeira hurt Smith with uppercuts in the third round and dropped him with a left at the fence.
With Smith on the ground, Teixeira fired shots from above as the round ended. Smith’s ear was bleeding from the barrage of blows.
Teixeira hammered Smith to open the fourth. A bloody Smith took punishment on the ground.
Smith had a 37-14 lead in significant strikes in the first round and a 36-30 edge in the second. Teixeira led 43-1 in the third, 32-12 in the fourth and 19-0 in the fifth.
Erik Karlsson is mindful of the playoff and Stanley Cup aspirations of other players around the National Hockey League, but doesn’t see much reason for the San Jose Sharks to come back to try to finish what’s left of the regular season. While commissioner Gary Bettman is optimistic the NHL can restart play at some point this summer, the league has not decided whether to continue with the regular season or go straight into the playoffs. Momentum is building for the latter, though, with discussions centred around playing games at a handful of hub NHL cities.
The Sharks (29-36-5) had 12 regular-season games remaining and were in 15th and last place in the Western Conference when the NHL paused its season two months ago in response to the growing worldwide health crisis.
The playoff scenarios that have reportedly been discussed at the league level would not include the Sharks.
“As of right now, I don’t know what the point is for us to come back, if they’re going to play us five games and be away from our family and friends and put ourselves in that position for pretty much nothing,” Karlsson said Wednesday on “Lunch Talk Live” on NBCSN.
“But, then again, it’s the big picture, too. You’ve got to think about the guys on other teams that are in a position to possibly win something, and you feel for those guys. It’s tough to say. The situation is obviously unique. There’s not very many answers out there as to what’s going to happen in the near future.”
Karlsson’s season was thought to have been over when he needed surgery to repair a fractured thumb he suffered Feb. 14 in a game against Winnipeg.
The Sharks played 13 more games after that, going 48-1 to fall to last place in the west.
“I’m good,” Karlsson said. “I don’t think the thumb injury was anything major. It was a very unfortunate accident — nothing you can do about a big bone break. But right now it feels great. I swung the golf club a couple times, and I’m not a great golfer even though I would like to be. So I hit the ground a lot, and no pain.”
Karlsson had 40 points in 56 games at the time of his injury, and was part of an offence that was anemic for most of the regular season.
A year after setting a franchise record with 289 goals, or 3.52 per game, the Sharks this season averaged 2.57 — fourthfewest in the NHL. The Sharks’ power play ranked 23rd in the league at 17.5 per cent, a year after it was ranked sixth at 23.6 per cent.
“Obviously, this year, it’s been a tough year. It hasn’t really gone the way that anyone expected, even though I don’t think that really reflects how good of a team we do have,” Karlsson said. “Something good is going to come from it. When you go through times like this, which most guys on this team have not done before, I think it shows you a lot about yourself.
“It shows what you want to be and the dedication it takes to be that, and this year we didn’t bring that, and that’s why we got the result that we got and I don’t think that anybody will ever want to go through that again. I’m hopeful that, when we come back to start the next year, things are going to be very different.”