Elijah Smith has waited four years for this moment.

It’s late August and days prior, he received a call from his father, Gilbert, who informed the 22-year-old that Smith might fight on Dana White’s Contender Series in September, but they had to wait for more details.

Two days passed. Nothing.

The next day, Smith received a call from his management team, one he couldn’t answer as he tended to clients at Heuberger Motors, Smith’s day job.

Shortly afterward, Gilbert called.

“OK, let me answer real quick,” Smith said.

Gilbert confirmed that the former Sierra Stallion will face bantamweight Aaron Tau on Dana White’s Contender Series on Tuesday and could earn a UFC contract.

“I feel confident going into this,” Smith said. “Camp has gone well and we feel like we’ve game-planned perfectly. We’re ready to go out there and go get this contract. … This is not just life-changing for me but for the entire gym. I feel like it only takes one to make it then the door opens up for everybody else. I feel like I’m the one who can help get Victory MMA on the map.”

Smith’s road to MMA began shortly after the prep state wrestling season in 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world.

At Sierra, Smith wrestled two years — his junior and senior seasons — and qualified for state both times.

In 2020, in the 3A 145-pound bracket, Smith earned a tech fall in his first match but dropped his following two bouts to end his prep career.

Gilbert recalled his son’s devastation from the state performance, but believes it served as a catalyst for the bantamweight’s current path.

“He kind of came off the couch and wrestled because the coaches asked him to do a favor for them,” Gilbert said. “But the fact is that you can’t stop wrestling after a few years, pick it back up and expect to beat these studs. He learned that and he felt like he could do more. I feel like fighting was the next step for him.”

Smith, who hoped to play football at a junior college in California, believed classes would resume in March 2020 and kept training.

He trained a handful of times at Victory MMA, which Gilbert founded, and eventually told his dad about his desire to fight.

Gilbert thought his son was joking.

“At the time, he would come to the MMA gym sporadically, and he was more serious about football,” Gilbert said. “I told him to come to sparring that Friday. I didn’t think he was going to show up. That Friday — I’d forgotten about it — he walked through the door and I was like, ‘Holy crap, he actually showed up.’ He showed up and it’s been nonstop since then.”

Gilbert, who had a brief stint in the UFC and appeared on The Ultimate Fighter seasons 17 and 23, trained Smith throughout the pandemic. One year later, Smith tested his abilities in the amateur ranks.

In his first two fights, Smith dropped his opponents in less than 30 seconds.

“I beat the first guy in 15 seconds and I took another fight and beat the guy in 7 seconds,” Smith said. “That’s when I was like, ‘Alright. I’m transitioning from trying to be a football player to trying to be an MMA fighter.”

Smith mopped his competition in the amateur ranks and built a 5-0 record before he advanced to MMA in August 2022.

The domination continued and Smith opened with a victory in 10 seconds and another first-round win to close 2022.

In March 2023, Smith lost his first match, a third-round TKO to Reyes Cortez. Smith said the loss to Cortez “humbled me” and transformed him into a better fighter.

“I went into that one too confident,” Smith said. “I studied Reyes before the fight, but now when I study, it’s on a different level. I watched the film from that (Cortez) fight 10 times and took away so much from it.”

Since his loss to Cortez, Smith has won four consecutive fights. Heading into the matchup with Tau, Gilbert has the utmost confidence in his son.

“First and foremost, Elijah’s gonna win,” Gilbert said. “It’s not about if we win, it’s about how we’ll win. … You don’t understand how much we broke down (Tau) on film. We broke down everything he’s done. We watched all of his fights. The guys who (Tau) has fought, we’ve watched their fights, too. We have numbers, stats, everything.”

This is a stark contrast to Tau, who Smith feels is not taking the fight seriously.

Tau, who enters the match 8-0, began the verbal sparring last week and seemed cavalier about the match.

Originally, Tau was slated to fight Quang Le, but the New Zealand bantamweight said on the “Who the Fook Are These Guys?” podcast, he didn’t know who replaced Le.

“The way I find out who I’m fighting is I see a poster on Instagram,” Tau said on the podcast. “My coaches do that kind of stuff and I believe in their process. I’m the guy who, if my coaches say run 100 meters and jump off that bridge, I run as fast as I can and I don’t even look before I jump.”

During the podcast, Tau also said he’ll demonstrate his nickname Tauzemup — pronounced “Toes ‘em up.”

“Where I come from in New Zealand, it’s a term … (you hit) someone so hard that their toes face up,” Tau said. “You’re gonna expect to see someone get toes’d up and you’re going to expect to see me get a Dana White Contender Series win and a contract.

“I’m going to push the boundary even further with this and I’m going to say I’m going to be the first person on Dana White’s Contender Series to get a fight bonus.”

Despite Tau’s bluster, Smith said his confidence hasn’t wavered. In his mind, Smith is in Vegas to sign a UFC contract. The fight is just a formality.

Gilbert believes his son has earned the right to exude such confidence.

“I always say fighters should be semi-delusional, you have to have a sense of confidence like you’re a world champion,” Gilbert said. “I say semi-delusional because you can’t feel that way and feel like you don’t need to train. That delusional mindset is based off your work ethic, not talent. Anybody can have talent. Hard work beats talent when talent refuses to work hard. And Elijah has put in the work.”

And Smith is about action, not bravado.

“I know I’m the better fighter and I believe in myself. I believed in myself before anybody believed in me,” Smith said. “I want to go out there and show the world that Elijah Smith, Victory MMA and Colorado Springs can get down and dirty.”