How Elijah Smith beats Davey Grant: win it before the third

Here's a number that should worry anyone who has Davey Grant written off. In April, at 40 years old, he landed 162 significant strikes on Adrian Luna Martinetti and won all three cards. Round by round it went 44, then 54, then 64. He got busier every five minutes.

On Saturday he meets Elijah Smith on the main card of UFC Fight Night: Cortes Acosta vs Walker at the Meta Apex (main card 8 p.m. ET, 01:00 UTC Sunday). Smith is 24, unbeaten in the UFC, and the betting market has run hard at him: from -200 at the first sportsbook price on October 31 to -303 now across 18 books, with Grant out to +240. Take out the margin and that's a 71.9 percent favorite. Our model has Smith at 66 percent.

I think both numbers are right about who. What I want to work out is how, because the way Smith wins this fight is narrower than a 16-year age gap makes it look. He has to win it early.

The fighter who gets better

The received wisdom on old fighters is that they fade. Grant does the opposite, and the round splits show it fight after fight:

Those are significant strikes landed, Grant first. Against Taveras he threw 129 in the third round alone. It's a pace that should break a man his age, and it hasn't yet.

So the first rule for Smith is simple. Don't let this become the kind of fight where round three is the one that decides it.

The round Grant gives away

Now look at the middle row of that table again. Against Blackshear, Grant landed three significant strikes in the first round. That's because Blackshear took him down on his first attempt and held him there for 3:52 of the five minutes. Grant then won the next two rounds by a combined 63 to 31, and the fight.

That's the template, and it's a two-part one. Part one is that Grant can be put down and kept down early. His takedown defense at UFC level is 65 percent, which is solid, but it's not the wall it needs to be against a wrestler who commits. In 2023, Raphael Assuncao took him down in each of the first two rounds and held him for 1:46 and 1:38 of them.

Part two is the warning. Both Blackshear and Assuncao lost. Assuncao won the control battle for two rounds and was submitted at 4:43 of the third, after Grant knocked him down. Holding Grant for one round isn't the plan. Holding him for the round, then making him carry weight in the next one, is.

What Smith brings to it

Smith is 10-1 as a professional, out of Team Victory, and he has spent time on top of all four opponents he has met under the UFC banner, including the Contender Series. Across those fights he averages 2.98 takedowns per 15 minutes at 53 percent accuracy.

His best work is front-loaded. On the Contender Series in September 2024, he went 3 for 4 on takedowns in the first round against Aaron Tau and out-landed him 25 to 2. Against Toshiomi Kazama in August 2025 he landed 37 of 46 significant strikes, held him for 3:49 and stopped him at 4:10 of the first round. Against SuYoung You in March, he knocked him down in the second round and submitted him at 1:04 of it.

That's three of his four in the UFC system decided or dominated early. The fourth is the one to study.

The round Smith gives away

Against Tau, Smith won the first two rounds clearly: five takedowns from eight attempts and 2:11 of control. Then in the third he went 0 for 3 on takedowns and Tau out-landed him 56 to 31. Smith still won the decision, but the third round looked a lot like a Grant third round, with Smith on the wrong end of it.

The Vince Morales fight in February 2025 says something similar from a different angle. Smith and Morales were level at 19 significant strikes each after five minutes. The second round was a grappling exchange where each man held the other for about two minutes. Smith won a unanimous decision, but nothing about it ran away from Morales.

And the You fight has a first round worth remembering. You took Smith down four times in seven tries and held him for 2:42 of it. Smith's own takedown defense is 53 percent. He answered in the second round, but Grant isn't the man to exploit it. Grant averages under one takedown per 15 minutes.

The trap in the scramble

Here's where I'd point the camera. Four of Grant's seven UFC losses are submissions, and the last one is the fight Smith should watch. In October 2025, Charles Jourdain knocked him down in the first round and submitted him at 3:05, out-landing him 25 to 9 on the way.

The other three came in different shapes: Chris Holdsworth in the second round in 2013, Damian Stasiak in the third in 2016, Manny Bermudez in 59 seconds in 2018. When Grant is hurt or scrambling, he has been there to be finished.

Smith has 1.1 submission attempts per 15 minutes and finished You with one after dropping him. If he gets Grant down early and Grant fights to stand, the scramble is where Smith has the edge.

The other column

The model's biggest input is age, and it's not close: 40.9 against 24.2. But the striking input is less one-sided than the market's price suggests. Grant lands 5.6 significant strikes a minute to Smith's 4.2. Grant also absorbs 4.0 a minute to Smith's 3.0. The model reads those together as a Smith edge, a small one.

The prop board reads the fight as Smith's to lose and isn't sure how he wins it. Smith by knockout is +209 and by decision +189, almost level. Smith by submission is +496. Grant by knockout is +669, by decision +522, by submission +1453. Over 2.5 rounds is -123 on 14 books. None of this is betting advice. It says the books expect Smith, and expect it to take a while.

What to watch

The first takedown and the clock. If Smith lands it inside the first two minutes and holds Grant down the way Blackshear did, the third round never becomes the round that decides this, and the market's 72 percent looks right. If Smith's first shots fail and the fight stays on the feet into the second, Grant's output starts climbing the way it has for three straight fights.

The 40-year-old has made a habit of winning the last five minutes. Smith's job is to make sure they don't matter.