Anthony Smith details brawl with home intruder: “It was one of the toughest fights I’ve had in my whole life”

UFC light heavyweight Anthony Smith said he got into a vicious brawl with a home intruder on early Sunday morning in what he calls “one of the toughest fights” of his life.

Smith told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani the whole story about what happened, and it really is as crazy as it sounds.

According to Smith, he woke up at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning when his wife heard a stranger in his Omaha-area home. Smith says he got into a life-and-death struggle with the man, Luke Haberman, and had to fight him tooth-and-nail for five minutes before the police arrived on the scene. The man broke into Smith’s house through the garage.

“I’m not lying when I said it was one of the toughest fights I’ve had in my whole life. I went into that fight ready to die. Nobody smart breaks into a house in the middle of the night unarmed. When they break in at night, it’s to hurt people,” Smith said.

“No normal human is able to fight like that. I’m by no means the baddest dude on the planet. But he’s a regular Joe and I had a hard time dealing with him. And he took everything that I gave him. Every punch, every knee, every elbow. He took every single one of them and kept fighting me.”

Smith said that he and his family were not injured in the attack but he admits it was a “terrifying” experience. Although Smith is one of the top-ranked light heavyweights in the UFC, he was not prepared to fight someone in his house in the middle of the night, and he says the situation left him and his family frightened.

“You always just think you’re such a badass. I just don’t feel like one. I feel insufficient a little bit. I didn’t know it was possible to be that terrified,” Smith said.

Haberman, the man who broke into Smith’s home, was arrested by Nebraska police and charged with first-degree criminal trespass. The motive at this point is unclear.

Anthony Smith is scheduled to take on Glover Teixeira in the main event of UFC Nebraska on April 25. That event, like all other upcoming scheduled events, is in limbo due to the coronavirus outbreak.