Anthony Smith reveals his leg is ‘not good at all’ after sustaining serious damage in Aleksandar Rakic fight

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Anthony Smith is still feeling the effects of his three-round battle with Aleksandar Rakic from this past weekend at UFC Vegas 8.
The former light heavyweight title contender ultimately suffered a unanimous decision loss but the majority of the damage done came from a series of leg kicks that essentially took away the ability to alter his game plan after the opening round.
A day later, Smith revealed on his Sirius XM radio show that he was in really bad shape thanks to those vicious kicks from Rakic.
“It’s not good. It’s not good at all,” Smith said. “I’m still on crutches so there’s that. If I’m being really honest with you guys, I’m not doing well. I’m super disappointed. I couldn’t get out of bed on Sunday. They had to send people from the [UFC Performance Institute] to my hotel room to drug me up and put a bunch of anti-inflammatory creams and big compression ice machines. It was like I had a whole f**king team in my room. It’s a little bit better today.
“There’s an occult fracture on my fibula head so that’s cool. It sounds bad but it’s not a huge deal actually. It’s 4 to 6 weeks it will be fine. But yeah, that’s how my leg is.”
An occult fracture is essentially a broken bone that doesn’t appear well on an x-ray, which may then require additional testing to confirm.
While Smith says he started to feel a little bit better as time passed but his leg definitely took the brunt of the punishment in the fight with Rakic.
If not for those kicks, Smith is confident he could have made the necessary adjustments to have a much different performance but the early attacks from Rakic changed everything in the fight for him.
“Had I not had the leg damage, I would have changed my game plan and just said all right we’re just going to stand in this boxing range and we’re going to f**king go to town here,” Smiths aid. “I’m confident I’d have been fine but I couldn’t take one more leg kick.
“I didn’t have the ability to change the game plan to just strike with him and just box. Because the one time he steps back in kicking range and I don’t have enough time to close that distance and he kicks me, I’m down and there’s no way, I’m not getting back up.”
With nearly 50 fights on his resume, Smith has seen just about everything possible during his career but even he couldn’t imagine the kind of damage that Rakic could dish out with only a few kicks in that opening round.
“That’s the thing — he kicked me three times. That is nuts,” Smith said. “Hector Lombard kicked me 32 times in that fight. No issues. I walked through the airport the next day.
“Three kicks from Aleksandar Rakic and I’m on f**king crutches.”
For now, Smith added that he will be taking time off to rest and recover before making any decisions about his next fight.


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