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Frank Mir: I’m at the back of the line in the UFC Heavyweight division, but I’d be happy to fight Anderson Silva
By Zach Arnold | April 28, 2010
In a recent interview with Raw Vegas, former UFC Heavyweight champion Frank Mir discussed his thoughts on where he stands in the pecking order of the UFC Heavyweight division. When asked about who he wants to fight next, Mir said it’s largely out of his hands right now.
“Well, I mean honestly, I’m just coming off a loss. I’m just interested in fighting anybody. Realistically, I don’t see it being a Dos Santos or Cain Velasquez. Both of those guys are on win streaks. They don’t really have anything to gain by fighting me right now. I’m at the back of the bus now so I got to fight somebody else who is at the back of the bus. Those guys get to be the superstars and if one of them has a speed bump, let’s say they fight each other, I could fight the loser. Fighting them right now is probably not going to happen.”
Mir recently made waves by stating that he would be interested in fighting Anderson Silva. He’s been asked lately if he could give an exciting fight with Silva because Silva seems bored in UFC at the moment. Would Mir take the booking?
“Absolutely, Anderson Silva’s one of the best fighters in the world, pound-for-pound. He’s a phenomenal striker. I think his movement and head movement on his feet is second-to-none. Unbelievable.”
Like some of the fighters based out of the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas, Frank Mir also wonders if one of the reasons that Anderson Silva was clowning around in the Demian Maia fight was due to the fact that he might have been tired.
“You know what? I think, I really don’t know what went through his head. At one point he seemed like he was very adamant about going after Demian and the first two rounds, I mean, that was like, wow, you know, well, you know, it’s Anderson. But then after that it’s like, almost like you know, I don’t know if he got tired. I just didn’t like all the antics and then all of a sudden when your opponent tries to engage, especially being such a world-class strike and then run from him. I don’t mind if you’re like Machida. Machida moves around a lot, too, but guess what? You pay prices, you know. He’ll come back in and take you out. And I feel that Anderson Silva is capable of doing that, too, so I don’t really know what happened there. As far as trying to excuse it, I think he should just own up to it and say, ‘Look, I screwed up, I have mental weaknesses like anybody else, I’m human, and I failed.’
If UFC called him tomorrow to take a fight booking against Anderson Silva, would he do it?
“Yeah, I would love to do it. I think it would be a phenomenal opportunity for me to face a legend in our sport. I mean the guy has the record for the most consecutive wins. The guy’s going down as the Michael Jordan of MMA right now. Would I love to be able to exchange punches and try to grab him and go in there? Yeah, I’d like to be able to say that I fought him and feel what it feels like. I want to go in there. Who wouldn’t want to go fight the most dangerous people in the world?”
Mir is coming off of a bad loss to Shane Carwin, who brutally pounded him at UFC 111 in New Jersey in late March. Leading up to the Carwin fight, Mir was obsessed with getting a re-match against Brock Lesnar. So much so that he got in trouble when he did a radio interview with Mark Madden in Pittsburgh and said that he wanted to have Lesnar be the first person to die due to “Octagon-related injuries.” UFC President Dana White and staff were in Australia at the time the remarks were made (for UFC 110). Mir ended up getting scolded by company management and lost his spot as WEC color commentator. So what went wrong for Mir in the Carwin fight? Was it a lack of focus?
“I mean, could it have been a lack of focus? Yeah, I could see that when I’ve watched the fight, it did seem that. I know things were leading up to the fight, things that had gone on, and you know I think really, honestly, it was just a mental mistake as far as when I was up against the cage, it’s something that I’ve been working on to defend the takedown and when I defended it the first time I think I was celebrating and going, ‘Ah, look, I’ve improved’ and I forgot about the dirty boxing aspect of the fighting and I got caught with some good uppercuts, worrying about the takedown. As I get better wrestling, I won’t consume myself with thinking about one thing. You know, once you focus, it would be like sitting there going, “Oh look I stopped the guy’s jab” and boom I got hit with the right hand. Ah man, this is fighting, I got to be focused on nothing and everything at the same time.”
A third match with Brock Lesnar seems out of the question, at least for 2010. Where does the former UFC Heavyweight champion see things progressing for his career for the rest of this year?
“You know the Brock Lesnar thing, I think that honestly, really at this point, if it works out I’d like to fight him again but I’m not as consumed about it as some people seem to think about. A lot of stuff is about marketing and trying to sell fights. Obviously that fight isn’t going to come out for a while, so truth being if I fight him I fight him, if I don’t I’d rather go ahead and just worry about who I have to fight next. Would I take the challenge to fight him? Yeah, Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, Dos Santos, they’re all super-dangerous guys. And so fighting any of them would be a challenge.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
That Carwin KO has seemed to bring him(Mir) down to Earth.
As for a fight with Anderson I think it would end bad for him. I think it goes something like Mir gets knocked down, and Anderson would finish him off on the ground while Mir turtles up. Probably in the first.
Mir was also interviewed as part of GameSpot.com’s “On the Spot” show that revealed most of the roster for UFC 2010 Undisputed, and when Nate Diaz was shown on the screen, Mir said that you can’t blame Diaz for what happened, and that one should instead blame Jason Miller for getting in the ring like that. Predictably, Bruce Buffer agreed that it was Jason Miller who was to blame and not UFC employee Nate Diaz or future UFC employee Jake Shields (who threw the first punch). Never mind the fact that all Miller did was something that we have seen done by countless fighters on countless occasions after major fights (including UFC fights): He asked about a potential upcoming match-up (and in this case, he did so with a smile on his face).
Ivan, what we saw Miller do is NOT something we´ve seen countless times. Yes, fighters have entered the cage and confronted other fighters for potential match-ups, but when was the last time you saw somebody just jump in there without being asked (usually the UFC plans these confrontations) and more importantly DURING the post-fight interview? I can´t remember, maybe you can refresh my memory.
Ivan, I’ve never seen a UFC fighter break into an interview like that, especially by forcing aside the winning fighter so he could get to the microphone.
Melendez and Shields both gave him a “back the fuck off” push, at which point it would have ended had Miller not waded right back in.
Miller absolutely instigated when he rushed back in. That was the key moment.
LOL at trying to paint Mir and Buffer as Zuffa shills just because they felt Mayhem was at fault.
I seem to remember on of Strikeforce’s own announcers squeezing his way in to a post-fight interview just so that he could say the same thing. Is Mauro a Zuffa shill as well?
People have different opinions of who was at fault. That doesn’t mean they are mindless drones toeing the Zuffa party line. It just means they arrived a different conclusion than you.
That entire fight was Mayhem’s fault. That shit has never happened in the UFC because they actually control what goes on in their cage. If there is ever a faceoff, it is well planned and nobody just comes in and steals the mic.
A 5-on-1 beatdown does seem like a reasonable reaction to a guy playfully asking about a rematch with a smile on his face…
(sarcasm intended)
Throwing down when a couple guys push you away after you get up in their space is also a reasonable reaction.
Sarcasm and all that.
I’m not really interested in seeing Mir fight anyone let alone Silva. I definitely don’t see myself buying any PPV because Mir is fighting. Would I still buy the PPV if he was fighting? Maybe, but the other four main card fights would have to be the selling point for me.
I wish they would let anderson go ahead and fight somebody arguably out of his capacity like a Mir or Gonzaga.
Or even somebody guaranteed to at least push him hard like Thiago Silva.
I think it would do wonders for whipping a bit of the smirk out of his behavior.
But it looks like Dana is going to insist on ego fencing with him instead with the huffing and the puffing and the threatening to cut him if he doesn’t take his unchallenges more seriously.
Although I’ve recently been reintrodused to how effective good wrestling is against even the flashiest strikers. And Chaels intriguing refusal to be intimidated does make me more excited than I was for this match and believing he’s got a chance now.
But I still wouldn’t have minded seeing anderson thrown under the figurative bus just for the constitution though.
Maybe next time.
But WAR Chael first!