FRANK MIR'S REBOUNDS TO ULTIMATE FIGHTER 8

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FRANK MIR'S REBOUNDS TO ULTIMATE FIGHTER 8
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - by Tom Hamlin - MMAWeekly.com

Frank Mir freely admits that Brock Lesnar gave him a second shot at UFC gold after his nearly career ending motorcycle accident in 2004.

Lesnar was expected to use his meat cleaver hands to smash Mir into bits, a steppingstone on the way to a heavyweight title shot. Lesnar did just that for the first 80 seconds or so. But according to Mir, it was his newfound ability to handle setbacks that prevented him from folding under pressure, submitting the wrestling star in just 91 seconds. And it wasn’t some expensive mental coach or guru or self-help tape that helped him get back on track. It was a good old-fashioned ass kicking at hands of his wife.

Mir’s turnaround began in a Sacramento hotel room after UFC 65. He had just been trounced by Brandon Vera. Mir couldn’t understand it; he was fully recovered and had trained hard. He was even eating right, something he struggled with in the past. Sitting on the hotel bed, he couldn’t even remember getting hit by Vera’s knee, or any of the punches that followed before the fight was stopped.

He cried for a bit while his wife, Jennifer, sat by his bedside and patiently waited for him to stop. Then she let him have it.

“I’m sitting there, (and) I’m like ‘Okay baby, I’m just going to retire, I don’t have it any more, the accident took it away from me,’” Mir recounted. “She was like, ‘do you think you’re the first fighter to have a bad day? You think you’re the first guy to struggle in life? What are you, a bitch? You’re the father of my babies?”

Ouch. And she wasn’t done.

“‘You’re being a bitch,’” he continued. “‘So what if you had a bad day? Randy Couture, didn’t he get his ass kicked by Josh Barnett embarrassingly bad? Now look at Randy Couture. Was he a bitch like this? I wonder if he was a bitch like this.’ She started walking around the room. ‘I wonder if I talked to Randy, I wonder if I could be his woman, and not your (expletive) woman.’ I’m like whoa.”

Mir says it was one hell of an eye-opening experience (at least the one eye he could open that night), and spurred a change in mindset that brought him where he is today.

“Had (the Lesnar fight) happened five years ago, I never would have made it past the first round,” he said. “I would have folded. I would have been crushed, because I was so dominant before the accident that I didn’t have mental strength to overcome hardship.”

One of four participants in the UFC’s informal heavyweight “tournament,” Mir is sitting at the threshold of an interim heavyweight title shot in December, against his MMA idol no less, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. In late June, he finished filming the eighth season of “The Ultimate Fighter.” He’s not nuts about the circumstances, and wishes Couture had come back after his Dec. 27 fight, but nevertheless, it’s a second chance.

Mir says he tried to be himself on the show, however much trouble that got him into. Given the tongue-lashing he got, it was often hard for him to be shoulder for fighters to cry on.

“I’m not as good of a coach to people’s personal problems as my wife is,” he said. “Sometimes some of the other people had issues, (and) some of them I feel like there’s nothing wrong with them, they’re not overcoming any injuries, they didn’t get embarrassed on pay-per-view in front of millions of people. They’re crying about stuff and I’m just looking at them. They don’t want to fight, (and) my problem was I’m quick to be like, ‘don’t fight.’”

Still, Mir found himself bonding to the fighters more than he expected. When they had a bad day, so did he. A few he liked so much, he recruited them for his upcoming fight with Nogueira.

An advocate of the “fight to stay in the house” philosophy, he feels there is a deeper talent pool on this season. Most fighters with one or two fights on their resumes were weeded out quickly.

“If we were, say, you’re first-string guy against my eighth string guy, I have more depth,” he said of the comparison between earlier casts. “There was a lot more potential as far as more guys that knew what they were doing.”

That didn’t keep the drama queens off the show. Mir says viewers will see the requisite non-cage conflict that keeps the series afloat. While it wasn’t always roses and daisies between the two coaches, Mir says they remained professional.

“There’s times that we looked at each other,” he said. “There were times that I didn’t like him. And I know there were times I know he did not like me. But it was a very competitive nature. There was never any childish thing between him and I. The fighters more than made up for that.”

Mir says fans should expect to see a group of skilled professionals early on in the show, and expects that many of them will go on to careers in the UFC. But if you’re looking for drama from him, you won’t get any. He hasn’t got Tito Ortiz’s acting chops.

“The way I looked at it, if I act like I’m somebody else, and I get criticized for it, I’ll sit there and go, that’s not even me,” he said. “The thing is, if I act like myself and (people say) ‘you’re a (expletive),’ I say this is me. You don’t like it… don’t watch me.”

[souldrum71]

I love it. "Are you a bitch?" His wife really laid into him. What's funny to me is that I can see Lady Fighter doing the same to me if we were in a similiar situation. Except she would probably land some knees and punches to accentuate her point.

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That's a good woman for you.

Maybe, that's where the saying "Behind every successful man, there is a successful woman" came from.

[ladyfighter]

Haha.. Mir's wife sounds like a long lost sister! LOL

Originally Posted by souldrum71

I love it. "Are you a bitch?" His wife really laid into him. What's funny to me is that I can see Lady Fighter doing the same to me if we were in a similiar situation. Except she would probably land some knees and punches to accentuate her point.

You know it baby!

Originally Posted by complete

That's a good woman for you.

Maybe, that's where the saying "Behind every successful man, there is a successful woman" came from.

Thanks complete..