“You pursue perfection, but it never really comes,” he said. “Yeah, it’s super disappointing, but you can sit here and cry about it or you can accept it.”
And let’s be honest, there is glory in the pursuit, and Smolka has eight UFC wins to prove it. But as he approaches his weekend’s bout, the goal isn’t necessarily perfection, but consistency, something that has been hard to come by for the 30-year-old, who has alternated wins and losses since beginning his second Octagon stint in 2018. But hey, after losing to Vince Morales last December, if Smolka’s pattern continues, he’s likely to beat Grant.
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“You’d like to think, right?” he laughs, but in all seriousness, Smolka has had to adjust his style of fighting and approach to it since moving back to bantamweight from flyweight nearly four years ago.
“I have to plan on being the smaller guy,” he said. “No matter what, I’m not gonna match him on size and power so I gotta assume I’m gonna be smaller. They (bantamweight) carry power differently, it’s a different explosion, and they’ve got more muscle, so it’s like the punch comes in with higher velocity and they can launch the shots faster. Before, I wasn’t at such a big power disadvantage. I might be longer than these guys, but I am not stronger. The way that their frames carry their muscle is different. And it’s annoying.”
