Last week it was announced Bellator had parted ways with colour commentator Jimmy Smith.
The move came as somewhat of a surprise to many with Smith having been with the promotion for nine years.
Smith elaborated about the decision on The Joe Rogan Experience MMA Show with long time UFC colour commentator and host of the show – Joe Rogan.
“It’s not a Bellator thing,” said Smith. “They were great to work with. They were great about the whole break up thing. What happened was, I had a deal with an option year and 2018 was my option year and when I was in Verona, New York doing the Verona show, my boss sat me down and said, ‘We’re not gonna renew 2018, we want a different deal.’
“When they come to you and say they want a different deal, it’s never – when you’re girlfriend comes to you and says she wants to talk it’s never, ‘I don’t give enough bl**jobs.’ They never say that. It’s always bad. It’s always bad.
“So that was it. When they were like, ‘We want to change the deal around,’ I was like, ‘Okay,’ and they did make an honest effort to keep me. They really tried, but they just didn’t make an offer that was worth me coming back. That was pretty much the deal so it’s kind of comparatively amicable.”
Rogan said he had been trying to get Smith to the UFC several years ago.
“I called Dana White about you, how many years ago, like four?” said Rogan. “I tried to get Jimmy Smith hired by the UFC four years ago. I was like, ‘Dude, you want better people, you want more people? Hire that f*cking guy. He knows what he’s doing, he’s excited, and he loves the sport. I was telling him you’re a great guy, he’s genuine, he’s a real fan and he’s f*cking good at it. Go get him’”
Smith said that the “timing didn’t work out then” but that things could be different now that he is no longer part of Bellator.
Rogan for one would like to team up with Smith at the UFC.
“You f**ked up, Bellator,” said Rogan. “You f**cked up. I’ve been telling everybody that Jimmy Smith’s the best out there and you let him go. That’s a huge error on their part. I would be thrilled if somehow or another they were able to work it out where Jimmy Smith was at the UFC. That would be what I would like to see.”
“We shall see,” responded Smith. “We shall see how that goes.”
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