This marks Smith’s retirement fight, and it’s worth revisiting
exactly how much “Lionheart” has overachieved in the last half
decade or so. Smith was in pure journeyman territory for the first
eight years of his career, bouncing between promotions—including a
one-fight stint in the UFC after it absorbed Strikeforce—before
getting the late-notice call for a UFC return in 2016. The next
year and a half saw Smith clearly establish himself as a UFC-level
middleweight, as he staged some impressive comebacks against
Andrew
Sanchez and Hector
Lombard. However, it felt like Smith’s career would peak around
there, with a decade of work culminating in a nice resurgence for
him as a gatekeeper to the middleweight rankings. After a 2018 loss
to Thiago
Santos, Smith moved up to light heavyweight and became one of
the UFC’s unlikeliest title contenders within a matter of months,
stringing together three finishes to become the top contender to
Jon
Jones heading into 2019. Admittedly, Smith timed his surge just
right given that the division was poised to undergo plenty of churn
and give way to the next generation of fighters, but it was still a
stunning rise; and even after dropping his fight against Jones in
one-sided fashion, Smith continued to hang around just below the
light heavyweight elite. Smith has been an interesting fighter in
this final form, wearing his heart on his sleeve even inside the
cage and constantly bending but rarely breaking. Smith never quite
seems to be at his most confident except when an opponent can bring
the “Lionheart” out of him, as most of his success has come in the
form of comebacks, whether it’s forcing him to storm his way back
for a knockout or an overaggressive opponent allowing him to pull
out a submission as part of his constantly underrated grappling
game. Smith scored one of those sudden submissions in May against
Vitor
Petrino, and at the moment, that might go down as his last
hurrah given his last two performances. He looked flat in a quick
turnaround against Roman
Dolidze and was seemingly in no condition to fight against
Dominick
Reyes, owing to Smith coping with the death of his coach and
longtime friend. It seemed like the loss to Reyes would
understandably be the final fight of Smith’s career, but he’s
instead attempting to go out on a high note back home in the
Midwest against Zhang.
China’s Zhang is a light heavyweight prospect worth watching, but
there isn’t much to say about “Mountain Tiger” for now thanks to
his fairly simple game. Zhang swings for the fences and succeeds a
whole lot more often than he fails, as he’s now riding 11 straight
wins, all via first-round finish. This marks a massive step up in
competition, however, and there’s not much to suggest Zhang can
keep up his offense for more than a few minutes. That makes this a
test of exactly where Smith is at in his last fight. Smith’s last
few performances might suggest a quick Zhang knockout, but he has
almost never been someone who gets sparked immediately, instead
requiring an opponent to weather his comebacks before truly
starting to break him over the long haul. This could wind up with
Smith ending his career on the sourest of notes, but as long as he
survives early, he should have one more win over a rudimentary
slugger left in him. The pick is Smith via first-round
submission.
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