Anthony Smith fought Jon Jones for the UFC Lightweight Championship, but has never known anything as difficult as the time he found a strange man in his house.
Smith, 31, detailed the nightmarish run-in in a new interview with ESPN’S Ariel Helwani. The incident occurred in the wee hours of Sunday morning around 4 am in Omaha. Smith was awakened by his wife, who informed her husband that she had heard “a man’s voice scream at the top of his lungs”. The light weight turned the corner outside his room and saw Luke Haberman.
“I didn’t know what he had,” said Smith. “People usually don’t break into your house in the middle of the night for good reasons. I expect me to hear a shot or to be stabbed in my body. As if he had something. I guess I have about two minutes before everything he has brings me out. ”
Smith’s wife rounded up the children and kept them safe in a room. Smith, meanwhile, struggled with the intruder.
“No normal human is able to fight like that,” recalls Smith. “I’m by no means the nastiest guy on the planet. But he’s a regular Joe and I had a hard time treating him. And he took everything I gave him – every punch, every knee, every elbow. He took each of them and continued to fight me. “
“You still think you’re such a bad ass,” said Smith. ” I do not want to. I feel… a little insufficient. I didn’t know it was possible to be so terrified. ”
At one point, Smith called his mother-in-law to get him a kitchen knife. Smith was given a carving knife, but struggled to hold Haberman with one hand. Haberman started calling someone else and Smith said he was ready to “bury” Haberman’s knife if a second assailant arrived.
“I am not lying when I say it was one of the most difficult fights I have ever had in my life. “
Smith said the man was not mentally stable. Late in the fight, Smith’s wife grabbed the man’s feet. Smith warned Haberman not to kick his wife. Haberman politely agreed and continued to fight Smith while keeping his legs still.
In a strange twist of fate, Smith also revealed Sunday night that it was the first time he had slept without a gun at his bedside in six months. Nebraska is a concealed harbor state and Smith forgot to remove the gun from a bag he was carrying earlier today.
After the police arrived and detained Haberman, Smith walked past the intruder and Haberman simply replied, “Hey man, I’m sorry.” Haberman was arrested and charged with first degree criminal intrusion.
What Smith remembered most about the incident: “My family was so brave.”
Smith (32-14) has won three of his last four fights, or four of his last five so to speak, and is expected to make the headlines at UFC Lincoln against Glover Teixeira (30-7) on April 25.
