The main event of UFC Fight Night: Smith vs Teixeira was a highly entertaining one. On this card, former title challenger Anthony Smith took on the veteran Glover Teixeira.
In this fight, the 40-year old put a one-sided beating on the Omaha native throughout the fight. From the second round onwards, Glover Teixeira set the tempo of the fight by landing huge uppercuts and looping right hands. The continuous blows caused swelling around Smith’s eye.
In the third round, Glover Teixeira landed a hard uppercut that dropped Smith. The Brazilian then went for the ground and pound and attempted to submit Smith, but the American somehow survived the round.
Midway into the fight, Smith lost two teeth and while Glover was on top of him, he handed one of his teeth to the referee Jason Herzog.
Anthony Smith appears to hand the referee his tooth while Glover Teixiera rains down punches…
What is @lionheartasmith made of?! 😨 #UFCJax pic.twitter.com/AoJ48fm8cZ
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) May 14, 2020
“I couldn’t keep my mouthpiece in place due to the missing tooth,” Smith told Ariel Helwani. “I looked down and it was on the canvas. So I grabbed it and handed it to him.”
Dana White says it was tough to watch Anthony Smith getting beat up
Anthony Smith had suffered enough damage through the third round to warrant a stoppage. However, the beating then continued from fourth till 64-seconds into the fifth round, when Jason Harzog had seen enough and intervened to stop the fight. This has been a terrific late surge for the aging Brazilian. To put it into perspective as to how vicious the beating was, Smith out-landed Teixeira 73-44 in the first two rounds. But the Brazilian bounced back to out-land Smith by 94-13 in the remainder of the fight.
Dana White said during the post-fight interview that the fight was tough to watch and that it should have been stopped.
“I was shocked that he [Anthony Smith] came out for the fifth, I didn’t think he would come out for the fifth,” Dana White said. “I thought his corner would have stopped it, I am no doctor, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he doesn’t have a broken orbital
“At one point, I have got monitors in front of me and I said to my guys I go ‘You know Teixeira punching him in the face and he reaches out and handed out something to the refs and the ref put it in his pocket’. He was picking up the teeth and giving it to the refs. When he went to the corner he kept saying that ‘My teeth are falling out’.
Do you guys think that the stoppage was late?
Glover Teixeira post-fight interview: