Frank Mir: These Hardships Have Made Me Stronger
Frank Mir has fallen on hard times in his UFC career lately, facing consecutive losses for the first time as a pro and experiencing a three fight/two knockout losing skid. His fight against Alistair Overeem at UFC 169 is being labelled as a ‘loser leaves town’ bout. Reem has dropped two straight since owning Brock Lesnar at UFC 141.
The end of a UFC career doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road for either veteran, but they will most likely have to find a home with a slightly lesser organization; not too hard with WSOF, One FC, Bellator and Legacy harvesting the UFC dropouts. Mir stopped by at ESPN to discuss his future after 169:
“I kind of know no matter what it’s not going to be my last fight. I’m still younger than a lot of the guys in the division. There are two ways I would consider retirement. One is losing to guys who are not top-level competition. The other is if I started losing where it’s like, ‘OK man, you were knocked out viciously and staring at the rafters.’ I won’t endanger my health. I’m sorry if those three losses aren’t killing my ego.”
Its good that Mir is mentally strong ahead of Saturday’s fight against ‘The Demolition Man’, but I hop the real Mir shows up. He has shown up out of shape, and sorts, in the past and it usually costs him the fight in brutal fashion.
“The losing streak started with Junior dos Santos, the No. 1 heavyweight in the world at the time. Then I lost to Cormier in a pretty boring fight and then to Barnett, which to me was a no-contest because the fight had a very controversial stoppage. Look at who I’ve fought. I should retire? Wow. We’d only have five guys in every weight class because everybody else would need to retire.”
“I prefer this route that I’ve taken,” Mir said. “These hardships have made me stronger.”
We’ll see how much stronger Mir is when he faces the K-1 champion Overeem at Saturday’s super-stacked UFC 169. I’m a firm believer in Mir, I think he can beat Overeem, and also finish him. It will be a great fight to watch, between two grizzled veterans and I’m sure it will be entertaining whichever way it goes.
