For he who wills, the price of life. On Sept. 24, James Smith has no fight booked. A little after a month, in three weeks he begins to compete again.
Smith agreed to jump on the UFC 332 card last month to face Bruce Whitehead on nine days’ notice, needing just 92 seconds to make his UFC debut. Then, when Carlos Leal fell out of his fight with veteran Randy Brown for this weekend’s UFC Vegas 123 card, Smith jumped at the chance to stand up again. This period is observed in twelve days.
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Who needs a fight camp when people like “Cobe” can fall?
“I don’t doubt it at all,” Smith told The Crown this week when asked about the tour’s delay. “I could fight anyone. I’m ready not to hesitate.”
If you know anything about Cicero, you know that he… confident in his talents. Before the Nico Price fight in 2025, when one UFC official said that he would fight under his name at the time, “I feel like I’m holding a fight in a sense where I’m able to let people go without them pressuring me. My biggest obstacle is getting out of the way before I get where I want to go.
At the time, even though he knocked Preston Parsons in the jaw in a concession stand in his UFC debut, he felt that he could get ahead of himself a little. But since then, Smith has attacked throughout the fight, Price (second-round submission shot), Josiah Harrell (first-round TKO) and then Tafel (first-round TKO). Including his Contender Series win over Christien Savole, Smith made light work of everyone’s face.
Jacob Smith is now 4-0 with four finishes in the UFC welterweight division.
(Alex Goodlett via Getty Images)
All this has led to great ambitions for thirty-year-old Smith, a blue-collar hopeful who lives in a suburb of Dallas. Strong trains MMA, which is half an hour from home and close enough to the roots of fighting, since he was a collegiate wrestler at Oklahoma State. His wrestling friend Kyle Crutchmer introduced him to OSU alum Daniel Cormier a few years back, and Smith traveled to California to train with “DC” Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev.
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When he puts his struggles against such teams, it’s perhaps easier to understand Smith’s fundamental confidence. He stacks up against the best. That’s why he believes he’s ahead of the welterweight field in just his sixth UFC fight, even if he hasn’t had to use his wrestling in the tightest sense so far in the UFC.
“I’m certainly ready, but I’m a step above,” he said. “I didn’t run into that guy who has the power that I have. I’m the best wrestler in this division, I mean, he delivers, none of that. I’ve wrestled with Islam, and I’ll wrestle him; [and everyone else] from the command to the last sign, whoever it is. I am struggling from all of them. I’m not the best fighter in the world, but in the UFC at welterweight, if it was, “Like I don’t fight, it’s just wrestling, there’s not one person in this division who can beat me.”
This is where he pulls the asterisk out of his bag of tricks.
“Now that I’ve said that, now all this extra stuff needs to be done,” he said. “But when I do that, I don’t forget where I am the best. And that just put me ahead and I’m confident to say.”
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It’s the “extra stuff” that gets people’s attention. In the last fight, Smith never gave Whitehead a chance. It was like a string that had been pulled eight months long and then released. The explosive test was such that it looked very much like a mismatch, of a power type. Smith came out in such condition that after three weeks he was able to take a place in the co-main event after Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan, against a proven veteran like Brown.
“It’s a long, frustrating opponent who is going to give me my hardest test up to this point,” he said. “But I felt him [before]I mean, I’m ready to bring whatever he has. I thought he was coming to the White House card fight with Kevin Holland. They flew there when [Cormier] and Randy was helping me get to Kevin’s place and giving me sparring and stuff like that.
“I mean, I know exactly what’s going to come down. It’s just, how do I want to do it? Do you want to go there and potentially try for this $100,000 bonus, or do I want to go there and get it out of there? It’s just how I feel when I’m in the cage.”
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Right now, the welterweight field is as stacked as any in the UFC, starting with Makhachev — the crowned No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter — at the top, followed by Carlos Prates and Michael Morales, who will fight for the 170-pound title at UFC 336 in January. Although Smith is not currently ranked, he knows that winning him in a fight with the top 15 fighter Browne takes.
Afterward, the spread that he feels is inevitable.
“I mean [I’m] I’m almost 10 steps ahead of these guys,” he said. “I’ll be a lot when I count for any of these guys. And I say, I’m just going to continue to show that whoever is against me. It it is inevitable There is no one to hold my counsel. And so I work to make a real fortune.
“It’s not luck. This is real deal stuff. Let’s see how we handle it.”
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Smith will once again be installed as the betting favorite on Saturday, a position he has used. He’s been the favorite in every fight he’s had so far in the UFC. If there is external pressure, it comes from the betters who expect him to fall under every time. It is the responsibility of any consumer to go to hear about the paralysis centered on him.
“More than I hear, man,” he said. “It’s to the point where it’s like, ‘Hey, yeah, let’s make money. Send me something. Send me something!’ I don’t get the reasoning, honestly. It’s got nothing to do with me. I’m not interested in it.”
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But if the force is internal, it comes as expected. He used to be in the premises, fighting in the morning and when I passed. Now it’s the co-main event, meaning he’ll be forced to sit through the entire schedule waiting for his turn to happen. That part was a torture to a man, who for a month did not even need the camp to be ready to roll.
“I hate looking around and stuff,” he said. “I’m coming to fight this dude, this dude is hiding somewhere. I wait. Everyone’s waiting. I’m anticipating. I relax to focus, I force myself to relax because I’m hyped. It’s fight day. I’m going to keep this energy. I’m focused. I need to keep this energy and I need this.”