During an interview with ESPN on Monday, Anthony Smith described the ordeal of having to fight off a home intruder early Sunday morning inside his Omaha, Neb.-area home.
The 31-year-old Smith described the encounter as "one of the toughest fights I've had in my whole life," hitting the intruder with everything in his repertoire only to have him keep coming at him. The saga ended when the man, Luke Haberman, was arrested and charged with first-degree criminal trespass, as reported by ESPN.
Upon hearing the wild story, UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones took the time to react to what his former foe went through, while adding how he would've handled the situation.
Whether Jones' reaction was genuine, sarcastic or a mix of both, the UFC light heavyweight champion did soundly defeated Smith by unanimous decision in March 2019, and that could explain why he might have felt compelled to offer his two cents to Smith's story.
Whatever the case may be, there's no doubting how serious of a situation Smith was in Sunday.
He told ESPN that he woke up after 4 a.m. to find Haberman in his home, which Smith shares with his wife, three daughters and mother-in-law, and that it took him pummeling and subduing the intruder, while waiting for police to arrive, for the scary episode to finally end.
Despite Smith being a 205-pound pro MMA fighter and Haberman being 170 pounds, the light heavyweight claims the stranger fought him relentlessly.
"No normal human is able to fight like that," Smith told ESPN. "I'm by no means the baddest dude on the planet. But he's a regular Joe and I had a hard time dealing with him. And he took everything that I gave him — every punch, every knee, every elbow. He took every single one of them and kept fighting me."
He added: "I'm not lying when I said it was one of the toughest fights I've had in my whole life. I went into that fight ready to die. Nobody smart breaks into a house in the middle of the night unarmed. ... When they break in at night, it's to hurt people."
Fortunately, neither Smith nor his family were injured.
Smith (32-14) is slated to fight Glover Teixeira (30-7) at UFC Fight Night on April 25 at a location that still hasn't been revealed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.