Anthony Wint: 'I think fighting is one of the stupidest things you can do with your life'
Anthony Wint is our final guest of the day, discussing his rapid rise from Contender Series to UFC, having no prior combat sports experience, not loving the art of fighting, his NFL career, comparisons to Josh Hokit, battling homelessness and gambling addiction, and more.
Video Transcript
Like that.
I don't even like fighting.
I think fighting's one of the stupidest things you can do with your life.
Or even just in, in a disagreement, I think fighting's a lose-lose when you're talking about beating somebody up on the street.
I don't wanna knock somebody out or, you know, make someone bloody, take their head off and have to look around my shoulder for the rest of my life.
So I'm a man of words, but I like to compete at the highest level.
I like winning.
I do not love losing, and I think that fighting is the highest risk, competition that you can be in, and I, I like to call myself a problem solver.
And in the MMA heavyweight division, there's a lot of problems, and my brain cannot stop firing, thinking about how I'm gonna take on these giants and take their heads off.
So when you say that you think that fighting is one of the stupidest things that you could do, do you mean, like, what you do on a daily basis now?
Do you not actually love what you do as well?
Not at all.
I love pleasing God, and if The best way for me to put it, man, God put me on this earth to glorify him.
And fighting is a avenue for me to compete at a high level, to be the light of this world, and to show people you can be at the bottom.
You can lose everything.
You can almost fall short of your dreams in the sense of playing football.
And I was in a place of depression.
I was in a place of not wanting I don't wanna say not wanting to live, but I had no drive in me.
I was sitting at a desk working for a nonprofit, and I knew that God had more for me.
But to be able to climb a mountain of the NFL and then fall, and then come back and try to climb another mountain, that's what I love doing.
I love trying to, to do things that people say I can't do.
But the art of hitting people in the face and making them bloody, that doesn't excite me.
So how do you balance that?
Because you have to pour so much into fighting, go to the gym every day.
It's exhausting.
You do have to beat up another man.
If you don't love it to a degree, how do you suspect that you'll become as successful as you want to be?
I think it, it, that makes me more successful in other places.
I won't fight forever.
My goals is to be a husband, to be a father, to be a, a standout person in my community, and doing those things always isn't fun.
I assume, I don't have a wife right now, I only have a girl I'm talking to, but I assume at one point I'm gonna have a wife.
She's gonna be home, and she's gonna be on, get on my last nerve.
And what weak men do, they take that situation, they take that feeling, that emotion, and they say, "All right, I want a divorce," or, "All right, I wanna go cheat on my wife," or, "I wanna go get a little fling."
And I think me sustaining, long suffering, going through the fire of training every day, which I, I somewhat love competing, going through the fire of walking down that, that, that tunnel in front of all those fans who want blood regardless of who it is.
It didn't matter if it was Stipe Miocic or me.
It didn't matter if it was Matthew Harris or me.
They just want blood.
Going that hour, one of the mo- the loneliest sports in the world is what, Mike Tyson calls it, and still doing that every single day, knowing that it doesn't give me the joy that gives something else, I think is refining me for what's to come.
When I'm 50, 60, 70 years old and my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren are looking at me like, "Hey, we need guidance, and you're the one to give it to us."
So I can't quit on them, just like I can't quit on this career that God's called me to.
