Jimmy Smith Says Bellator Made An Effort To Keep Him, But The Offer Wasn’t Good Enough

Former Bellator play-by-play commentator Jimmy Smith yesterday spoke for the first time about his exit from the company.

Smith spoke to Joe Rogan on the eighth episode of his ‘JRE MMA Show‘ and explained how he came to learn about Bellator wanting to change his contract.

“It’s not a Bellator thing, they were great to work with and they were great about the whole break up thing,” Smith said. “So what happened was, I had a deal with an option year and 2018 was my option year.

“When I was in Verona, New York, I was doing the Verona show and my boss sat me down and said ‘We aren’t going to renew in 2018, we want a different deal.’ When they come to you and they say they want a different deal, it’s never [a good thing]… it’s always bad.”

Smith then went on to reveal that Bellator did try to keep him in some capacity, but that it just wasn’t worth him signing the deal that was put on the table.

“When they were like ‘We want to change the deal around’ I was like OK,” Smith said. “They did make an honest effort to keep me, they really tried, but they didn’t make me an offer that was worth coming back and that was pretty much the deal.

Watch the full episode here: