Anthony Smith blasts Conor McGregor for making excuses following loss to Dustin Poirier: “We are all injured”

Fellow UFC fighter Anthony Smith blasted Conor McGregor for making excuses following his loss to Dustin Poirier, saying “we are all injured.”

McGregor lost via first-round TKO (doctor stoppage) to Poirier in their trilogy match at UFC 264, and afterwards, it has come out that he had a leg injury heading into the fight. Speaking on Sirius XM’s Fight Nation, Smith was asked about the reports of McGregor being hurt coming into the fight. For Smith, being injured is something that all MMA fighters have to deal with, and he believes that it’s not a valid excuse for McGregor.

🎙️"His excuses are very invalid to me." — Anthony Smith (@lionheartasmith) explains to @RJcliffordMMA why the notion of Conor McGregor's leg being injured prefight against Dustin Poirier isn't a legitimate reason for McGregor's loss 🔊#UFC264

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/OYAAfQ3qFS

— MMA on SiriusXM (@MMAonSiriusXM) July 20, 2021

“I would say Conor wasn’t any more hurt than Dustin was going into that fight. That’s not me saying Conor wasn’t banged up or his legs weren’t bothering him or his shin wasn’t cracked up or whatever, but he wasn’t any more injured than Dustin Poirier was. That’s my perspective at it from an athlete,” Smith said (h/t MMAFighting.com).

“It’s easy for a fan or someone who has never done it to say, ‘Oh, he was hurt.’ We’re all hurt. Every single one of us, every single time we fight. There’s not one person that can ever say they go in 100 percent healthy,” Smith said. “So his excuses are very invalid to me. To the general public, it makes sense that they people would buy into that excuse but Conor knows that all of us don’t buy it because we’re all hurt too. That’s how I look at it, but he’s not lobbying to us. It’s to the general public, the buyers, the PPV buyers. Those are the people he needs to convince but he knows he’s never gonna convince us.

“Everyone who loses has an excuse,” continued Smith. “It’s new for Conor to be like that. I’m not the excuses guy but in my circle, all my friends know what’s going on. They know pre and they know post. Like, ‘I know you’re never gonna say this but what was going on here? I know you’ll never say this publicly because you don’t make excuses.’ And I’ll absolutely tell my friends what’s going on. Knew that my hand was broken going into the Glover (Teixeira) fight and I never said anything about it because it’s not an excuse. Glover probably had a broken hand. We all are injured.”

Do you agree with the points that Anthony Smith brought up in regards to injuries?