Frank Mir has a big challenge in front of him at UFC 169 when he meets Alistair Overeem. Mir is looking to break a long losing streak and stay relevant in the division, a position similar to where his opponent is at. Mir talked to Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting about the losing streak, Overeem, whether he’d like to fight Brock Lesnar again, why he didn’t train at Jackson’s MMA, and a few other things. He started out with his thoughts on another bout with Lesnar:
“When people bring it up I do, but I honestly don’t sit there and dwell on it like, ‘Aw man, I wish Brock was back here’. His doll, we have a commemorative doll, he and I, my wife put it in the game room with different memorabilia. So I sit there and look at it all the time, but I don’t get the burning ‘I gotta get this guy’. I don’t have that personality where I just hold onto things like that. But when people ask me if I want to fight him, I say ‘yeah I’d love to.’ If it’s there, I’m going to take advantage of it. If it’s not, I’m not going to worry.”
Mir also stated that he didn’t contact the UFC when the rumors about Lesnar’s return came up, because he didn’t even hear about them until Tuesday when he started doing interviews for his fight with Overeem.
In regards to not training with Jackson’s MMA, his reasoning was simple. The holidays interfered with his ability to import suitable training partners, specifically former UFC fighter James McSweeney. So he just worked with his own guys. Jackson won’t be cornering him this weekend either, but he’s still a happy member of the team.
On his losing streak:
“Like I said a couple of times before, if I was losing to the number twenty guy that just got into the UFC and he’s had four fights and you know, after he beats me, he can’t win another fight, that would weigh on me. It’d be like ‘wow, I can’t even beat that level of competition’. But to lose to the Junior dos Santos’ and Daniel Cormiers, and to be facing Alistair in all main event or co-main event fights…I’m fighting tough guys. Guy that, if I fought them again, it could go the other way. It’s just that I’ve had a bad combination of three fights put together that could be losses on most people’s records. It just so happens that I fought those three guys back-to-back.”
He also started that Overeem’s attempts at trash talk and his own losing streak don’t mean anything to him, and that he is unlikely to take a fight outside the UFC if he was released unless a huge financial opportunity came along.
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