The New and Improved Scott Smith Eyeing Strikeforce Return in June

They call him the “Comeback Kid,” the Rocky Balboa of MMA.

While Scott Smith loves the nicknames he’s earned over the years, he’s ready to go back to his roots for his next fight and start dominating again, instead of battling back after taking a beating.

Smith made his debut at welterweight for his last fight in December 2010, where he was knocked out by current title contender Paul Daley. Smith doesn’t make any excuses about why he lost, but promises it had nothing to do with the weight cut.

“I would love to go to welterweight again. When you’re coming off a loss, everybody is easy to criticize, and I get a lot of people, especially family and friends, saying I cut too much weight and that’s the reason I got knocked out. That is a theory when you cut too much weight, you lose too much water in your brain, and your brain bounces off your skull, which that very well could be the case. I don’t like to point fingers at reasons, I think I just got caught,” Smith told MMAWeekly Radio.

“The cut was hard, but I felt great afterwards, and welterweight I think I can be real competitive there.”

What Smith wants to change is his ‘stand and bang’ attitude that has developed over the last few years. Early in his MMA career, Smith thought of himself more as a wrestler and grappler, but when he started to train boxing and Muay Thai, he fell in love with it.

So as practices came and went, he found himself gravitating more and more towards the stand-up portion of training, and less and less towards grappling.

With the last few months off, Smith is getting back the mat, something he planned to show when he fought Paul Daley.

“The last two years I’ve been so injured and banged up I haven’t been able to do much grappling or jiu-jitsu, which is my roots,” Smith commented. “For that I was finally able to do a lot of my jiu-jitsu and wrestling and right before I got caught my plan was to come in, take Daley down, and finish him on the ground.”

Finally taking some much needed time off between fights, Smith has let his body heal. Now that he’s nearly four months removed from the Daley fight, he’s ready to get back into camp and start training for a fight again.

The next time Smith hopes to step foot in the Strikeforce cage is at the next major Showtime even coming up in June. While no opponent has been offered, Smith is targeting that date for his return.

“I’m looking to get on the June Strikeforce card, June 18th I believe in Dallas,” Smith said. “Nothing’s been confirmed, but that’s kind of the rumors. I’m finally healthy now and ready to go, and June is kind of what I’m setting my camp for.”

Damon Martin is the lead staff writer and radio host for MMAWeekly.com.
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