After expressing his opinion about Alex Pereira‘s transition to light heavyweight, MMA fighter Anthony Smith is willing to engage in a fight with Pereira, who took offense to Smith’s commentary, despite it appearing to be generally complimentary.
Anthony Smith, the one-time UFC title challenger, was recently in the spotlight for comments he made about former UFC middleweight champion Alex Pereira concerning his transition to the light heavyweight division. Smith, as a former middleweight himself who found his stride after moving up to 205 pounds, was asked for his insights on Pereira’s shift. Smith acknowledged that Pereira had put up a good fight in his divisional debut against Jan Blachowicz at UFC 291, but also expressed that Pereira was not the same “large, scary monster” at 205 pounds. According to Smith, Pereira’s 6-foot-4 frame was “fairly normal” for an elite light heavyweight, rather than being tremendous for the usual 185 pounds weight.
With these comments, a rancor developed when Pereira fired back, leaving Smith bewildered. In an attempt to understand the situation, Smith stated, “So I’ll be honest, I texted [Pereira’s coach] Glover [Teixeira] yesterday and said, ‘What in the f*** is this?’”. Smith was curious if his comments had been taken out of context or misrepresented. His argument was simply that Pereira was now the same size as everyone else in his new division and would not benefit from the same size advantage he had at 185 pounds.
In response, Pereira issued a scathing rebuttal on his YouTube channel, dismissing Smith as a past-his-prime veteran “who never amounted to anything.” Pereira further accused Smith of being a “bitter man” and stated, “If there’s one guy doing well and another guy only criticizing, people aren’t stupid. They’ll see what’s going on.” Smith, a day later, still remained unclear about Pereira’s reaction, which seemed disproportionately aggressive to his observations. Given both fighters’ latest rankings among the UFC’s top eight in the light heavyweight division, Smith was not troubled by Pereira’s displeasure and stated, “If you want a f****** rival, you got one right here. I didn’t do s*** to you. I’ve been nothing but complimentary of him and his whole team. I don’t know what I did to that guy.”