Matt Brown is asking UFC fans to stop piling on Anthony Smith while the former title challenger waits for his Aug. 17 court date in Nebraska. Brown, the longtime UFC action merchant who has stayed loud after retirement, has talked before about everything from Jack Della Maddalena’s corner work to Dana White’s wildest public comments, but this one has a different weight because Smith is not just a headline to him.
Smith, whose UFC run ended with an emotional retirement after UFC Kansas City, was arrested in Sarpy County, Nebraska, on July 26. He faces charges tied to an alleged domestic incident involving his wife, and his next court date is listed for Aug. 17. Brown did not excuse the allegations. He also did not pretend internet strangers know the full movie from a handful of screenshots.
Smith’s final UFC walkout and retirement sendoff remain part of the context Brown says fans should not erase while the legal case proceeds.
One last time for Anthony “Lionheart” Smith 👏 #UFCKansasCity pic.twitter.com/eGOeTH7WFG
— UFC (@ufc) April 27, 2025
Brown made the comments on MMA Fighting’s The Fighter vs. The Writer.
Brown Says Accountability Is Different From Cruelty
Brown said the whole situation hit harder because he knows Smith personally and believes the public commentary has gotten ugly fast.
“This one does cut a little bit deeper than a lot of these other incidents that happen,” Brown said. “Anthony Smith is a respectable guy – I have a personal relationship with him, he’s always been a great guy to me, too. I’ll tell you what turned me off to this whole thing was the fan reaction when I read the comments. I thought Brendan Schaub had a great little rant on this. Talking about he knows he’s a good family guy, he’s met his kids and stuff before but the fan reaction really bugged me. These fans, I’ll say it as clear as I can: These motherf*ckers need to lay off Anthony Smith.”
That is not Brown waving away the case. He made that part plain. The allegation sheet is serious, and nobody in the sport gets a magic pass because they once fought five-round wars for a living. But Brown’s point was that people can take the charges seriously without turning the comments section into a firing squad.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to defend what happened. We don’t know what happened. I’m not going to defend it because cops were called and his wife was certainly feeling something she shouldn’t have been feeling. It was not a good situation so I’m not going to say there shouldn’t be accountability. But we weren’t there and neither was 100 percent of the people that are confidently judging his life from headlines and social media posts. That’s where I’d like to chime in be like hey, you motherf*ckers, headlines and social media posts are not real life.”
Brown also pushed back on fans treating Smith’s downfall like entertainment. He said he knows Smith’s character, but also said good people can make serious mistakes. That is the uncomfortable middle ground here. It is messy, it is ugly, and it does not fit neatly into the usual MMA fan habit of turning every scandal into a meme.
“I know Anthony personally. I know his character. I know he’s a good dude. That doesn’t mean good people don’t make serious f*cking mistakes. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to pretend either that this one moment tells the complete story of who he is. But we can take this whole thing seriously without defaming Anthony Smith. Without making jokes, attacking his family, calling him different names and celebrating someone’s downfall. Accountability is one thing. Cruelty and entertaining yourself with someone’s downfall is another thing.”
Smith’s wife previously described the episode as a mental health struggle and said she called for help to protect him from himself. Brown connected the broader issue to the post-fighting lives of athletes, referencing Daniel Cormier’s comments on Dustin Poirier’s arrest and the way fighters can lose structure when the cage door finally stops closing behind them.
“A lot of people, including myself, killed a lot of demons by fighting in this sport and we became better people through this sport,” Brown explained. “This journey made us into who we are. That doesn’t mean those demons aren’t still there. You think of someone like Anthony Smith or Dustin Poirier, I don’t put one of these situations past my own damn self. I think I’m beyond that in my life, but who knows? The fact is there were a lot of demons inside almost every fighter and the sport when you have this purpose and you have this mission in the sport, it’s a lot easier to push those demons away. When you get through the sport, those demons may resurface. Everybody wants to go to CTE, and that may be the case, I don’t know, but everybody wants to go straight to that. We’re all f*cked up individuals. We’re fighting in a cage for f*cking money. We’re f*cked up people. We’re not going to Harvard and f*cking Yale or whatever or most aren’t even going to regular colleges. I don’t know what people expect out of the type of people that come into this sport. My point is it’s a tragedy when these demons arise again.”
The next real step is legal, not social media. Smith’s case still has to play out in court, and Brown’s message is basically that the sport can demand accountability without doing victory laps over a fighter’s worst moment. After a run that included a UFC title shot, analyst work, and a brutal personal crisis, Smith’s story has turned into another reminder that life after fighting can be a different kind of five-rounder.
“I’m not going to justify what he did, I don’t know what he did. It probably wasn’t good. I’m not going to justify it. But as my brother in this sport, I’m going to support the motherf*cker and hope that he gets through it and finds peace and makes amends with his family. I don’t what these fans think chiming in with some negative bullshit is going to make anything better. You want the f*cking situation to be better or get worse? What’s your end goal here when you’re saying this kind of shit?”
Brown closed by saying he hopes Smith finds peace, makes amends with his family, and gets through it. That is a cleaner stance than pretending the allegations are nothing, and it is also miles better than treating a bad domestic case like another post-fight roast. The same fan base that watched Jon Jones weigh in on Dustin Poirier’s own arrest now has Brown saying the quiet part louder, because this sport has enough damage without everybody racing to add more.
