Army helps Colton Smith get first real training camp for UFC Fight Night 31

FORT CAMPBELL – Colton Smith wasn’t doing too shabby for an up-and-coming fighter.

He got onto Season 16 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” and he won the show, upsetting Mike Ricci in the final this past December.

Sure, that only made him officially 3-1. And a loss to Robert Whittaker in May has him only five fights into his pro career. But it turns out the guy never had a real training camp before now.

Smith (3-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC) on Wednesday meets fellow “TUF” winner Michael Chiesa (9-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 31, a “Fight for the Troops” show at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

For Smith, an active-duty soldier, the fight on a military base comes with extra importance in front of his fellow servicemen and women. But it took a little help from the Army for him to get an actual fight camp to prepare for Chiesa, a camp that took place at Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA in Albuquerque, N.M.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Smith told MMAjunkie.com of trying to balance his military career with his fighting career. “This is actually my first fight camp ever. I’ve never had a fight camp until this fight. I’m active duty. We still have soldier obligations. Luckily for this fight, the Army has blessed me with a fight camp.”

And the opportunity to put in the work with the Jackson-Winkeljohn squad couldn’t have come at a better time for him.

Smith said it was through the urging of Tim Kennedy, who headlines Wednesday’s show, that he made the trip to New Mexico to train. Kennedy is a longtime member of the Jackson-Winkeljohn team and also has an extensive military background.

“Tim Kennedy took me under his wing since I became a pro,” Smith said. “We both have a smilier background in the military. I’ve looked up to him for a long time. He’s been fighting a lot longer than I have, and I just kind of listened to his way. I got up to Jackson’s and took a leap of faith and just followed his lead – he’s been doing like 21 workouts a week. The dude’s a machine. If you attempt to keep up with him, you’re going to be doing all right.”

Keeping up with Kennedy also including training with the likes of fellow UFC fighters Carlos Condit, Donald Cerrone and Rustam Khabilov, Smith said, not to mention coaches Greg Jackson, Mike Winkeljohn and Brandon Gibson.

“That was a whole new experience for me to be able to train three or four times a day, six days a week,” he said. “It’s just an unbelievable experience to be able to train at that level.”

Smith said training camps in Albuquerque hopefully will be the new norm for him. It took the Army asking him what he needed to be able to have success in his next fight, though, and getting a full camp was at the top of his list.

He said the reciprocal relationship he has with the Army should be on display against Chiesa.

“It’s amazing, the leaps and bounds I’ve taken to make my MMA game seamless,” Smith said. “The Army is fully supportive of it and they want to see me be successful. I’m a huge Army supporter and a huge military supporter in general – soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, ‘coasts,’ it doesn’t matter – I support them all. I’m representing them. We don’t want me doing a half-assed training camp because of my obligations to the military. They want to make sure they’re giving back to me, as well.”

Smith will make his debut at lightweight in the fight, which opens up the main card on FOX Sports 1 (7 p.m. ET) following prelims on that same channel and MMAjunkie.com. He said he walks around close to 200 pounds, but with the help of a nutritionist, making the lightweight limit wasn’t an issue for him.

Right now, all that’s on his mind is a strong performance in front of his fellow troops and a successful lightweight debut.

But in the grand scheme of things, his obligations to the Army certainly aren’t forgotten.

“If tomorrow they said, ‘The day after your fight, you’re going to Afghanistan and taking a platoon and you’re going to go into combat,’ I’m on it,” Smith said. “Roger. Moving out. MMA’s on hold. That’s the message I put out.”

For more on UFC Fight Night 31, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.