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LAS VEGAS – Cameron Smotherman was in Saudi Arabia to corner a teammate when he got a call that changed his life.
Just a few days ahead of UFC Fight Night 245, Smotherman (12-4 MMA, 1-0 UFC) received a call from his manager asking him about his weight because Jake Hadley’s original opponent, Brady Hiestand, could no longer compete.
Smotherman did everything he could to ensure the opportunity wouldn’t pass him.
“I run to another hotel to check my weight, and then I’m like, “Oh, this sh*ts a little heavy,'” Smotherman said with a laugh during a post-fight news conference. “I’m not about to let this chance go to waste, and so I take a picture, but I grabbed the wall, and I just gave myself a little DC boost and took the picture, sent it.”
Smotherman said he immediately went to start cutting weight. A few minutes later, Smotherman received word he was in to face Hadley (11-4 MMA, 3-4 UFC), and needed to get on a plane immediately. He didn’t know who he would be facing, but he packed his bags and let his teammate know he was leaving.
“They were like, ‘Well, you know you’re not going to get here until Wednesday night?’ Smotherman said. “So, I’m like, ‘I don’t give a f*ck when I get here. I could get here Friday morning, and I’m going to f*cking make the weight.’ I got here Wednesday night and had to cut 20 pounds or some sh*t in a day and a half.”
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It was all worth it. Smotherman weighed in at 135.5 pounds for the bantamweight bout against Hadley and fought to an impressive unanimous decision win as a sizable short-notice underdog.
Everything moved so fast that things really didn’t start to hit Smotherman until he was in the middle of a post-fight interview in the octagon. It was then he could barely contain himself that he was now a winning UFC fighter, a dream that seemed bleak after being finished on Dana White’s Contender series last August.
That loss to Charalampos Grigoriou nearly sent Smotherman down a different path, but he stuck fighting, even though it was hard. He won his next three fights on the regional scene, stopping two of those opponents.
Despite winning three in a row, a path to the UFC didn’t seem realistic. So, how did he stay positive after the DWCS loss?
“Easy answer: You don’t stay positive,” Smotherman said. “I was negative as f*ck. I was about to quit every day. We were talking about this a few weeks ago. It was a running joke at the gym, ‘Oh, you know Cameron, he’s always about to quit.’ I’m like, because I am, motherf*cker! I’m not about to just – for me, I like fighting, but I don’t just love the sh*t to where I’m not about to just be fighting to fight.
“I’m fighting because I think I have a future in it, and I feel like I can do something with it. But yeah, it was hard as f*ck. I was depressed for a year and I didn’t even know it. … But I also realized in the back, that the reason I wanted to quit so much is because I was scared of failing.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC Fight Night 245.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Cameron Smotherman details wild short-notice UFC debut week after thoughts of quitting MMA