'I went into that fight ready to die': UFC star Anthony Smith recalls 'terrifying' home invasion (VIDEO)

You might think that if you are a former UFC world title contender, you wouldn't be the target for a home invasion. But that is exactly the situation that Anthony Smith found himself in recently.

Smith, who fought Jon Jones for the UFC light heavyweight championship in 2019, told ESPN of the prolonged encounter in which he had to fight off the burglar in the early hours of Sunday morning after being alerted to the incident by his wife. 

"I didn’t know what he had," Smith said of the invasion.

"Typically people don’t break into your house in the middle of the night for any good reasons. I’m expecting that I’m gonna hear a gunshot or he’s gonna stab me. Like he’s got something. I figure I’ve got about two minutes before whatever he’s got takes me out."

Smith attempted  his martial arts training to attempt to neutralize the situation, but was surprised by how the burglar - who he says was a smaller man - was able to take everything that Smith threw at him.

"No normal human is able to fight like that," Smith said.

"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, who lives with his wife, his three daughters and his mother-in-law, says that he was handed a knife by a family member during the tussle but even that didn't deter the intruder.

After a minutes-long struggle, local police finally arrived on the scene and detained the burglar who was later identified as Luke Haberman. He will face a misdemeanor trespass charge.

But Smith is glad that neither he nor his family was harmed in the incident but he was left shaken by what he described as a highly stressful fight for his life.

"I’m not lying when I said it was one of the toughest fights I’ve had in my whole life," Smith said.

"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."