“My name is Anthony Smith, and I want a title shot.”
Thus spoke the unlikeliest of light heavyweight contenders, exhausted and battered, after the biggest win of his career at UFC Fight Night 138 on Saturday in Moncton, New Brunswick. After more than 10 years fighting professionally, including stints in Strikeforce and Bellator MMA on top of a respectable 7-3 record in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, “Lionheart” took the opportunity to call for a title shot and remind viewers what to call him.
If you didn’t know his name before, well, there’s a chance you still might not know it now. Despite a gutsy win over the UFC’s second-ranked light heavyweight in Volkan Oezdemir, there’s a reason why Smith had to clarify who he was: To most audiences, he’s still a faceless UFC fighter. In fairness, having a name as aggressively generic as “Anthony Smith” doesn’t help much, either. At least “Jon Jones” has the mnemonic touch of the double-J sound to distinguish itself, if his fighting alone hadn’t already stood out enough…