The Ups and Downs and Ups Again of Frank Mir
Published by Jim Genia on May 11th, 2009 in Current Events

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At UFC 100 in July, interim heavyweight champ Frank Mir will step into the cage against champ Brock Lesnar and attempt to unify the belts. This will mark the jiu-jitsu specialist’s second time facing Lesnar and his third championship contest in a career full of more ups and downs than an EKG readout. For despite all his derailments and false starts, not to mention a near-catastrophic motorcycle accident in 2004 that forced him to relinquish the belt, Mir has avoided the dreaded flatline and thrived. His is a story of ups and downs and ups again – and while history has made legends of Randy Couture, Matt Hughes and Chuck Liddell, none have quite this tale behind their runs as champions.

When Mir debuted in the Octagon at UFC 34 he was heralded as some of the new blood Zuffa was infusing into their recently-purchased fistic franchise, a Las Vegas local with a baby face and a penchant for lightning-quick submissions. First to fall was Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu master Roberto Traven, whose black belt skills were inexplicably no match for Mir’s jiu-jitsu purple belt and bone-breaking armbar. (The win earned Mir’s coach Ricardo Pires more than a little of the Brazilian communities’ ire, as Pires was a Brazilian teaching an American all their tricks). Then came Lions Den representative Pete Williams, who Mir finished with a never-before-seen shoulder lock that marked the end of Williams’ tenure both in the UFC and as a mixed martial arts competitor. For UFC 38 in London, the rising star on track to a crack at the title was fed a “can” in Brit slugger Ian Freeman – a can who somehow defied the odds by pounding Mir into oblivion for the win via TKO. Just like that Mir was handed his first loss, and as is sometimes the case with runaway trains, the locomotive churning out submissions had been momentarily derailed.

Still struggling to tap into as wide an audience as possible, the UFC brass signed old-school antihero David “Tank” Abbott to their roster and pitted him against Mir at UFC 41. Mir tapped him out with a crafty toehold in under a minute. Next followed two consecutive wins over the lanky Wes Sims (the first victory was from disqualification following Sims’ illegal head stomps), which, in the promotion’s traditionally anemic heavyweight division, put Mir in line for a shot at the belt against former champ Tim Sylvia. And at UFC 48, after 50 seconds of quick combat, Mir literally broke Sylvia’s arm in two. He was now the champ.

Three months later, while riding his motorcycle, Mir was struck by a car and thrown. He survived, but his femur was shattered. Fourteen months passed with Mir unable to compete (he would, however, sit cageside to provide color commentary – a gig that would later become permanent with the WEC). Finally, the erstwhile champ was forced to relinquish his title, and whenever talk of his return arose, it was tempered with rumors (i.e., his inability to bend his knee to shoot for takedowns, his lack of motivation and the allure of “easier” money with his regular job working security at famed Sin City strip joint Spearmint Rhino). Would Mir ever come back? And if he did, would he be the same?

Those questions were finally answered at UFC 57, when Mir took on Marcio “Pano de Pano” Cruz and appeared to be a mere shadow of his former self. He lost that one via TKO, came back at UFC 61 to grind out an uninspired victory over Dan Christison, and lost quickly and violently to Brandon Vera at UFC 65. It seemed as if the man who’d taken the heavyweight division by storm years before was all but gone, left on the pavement of some Las Vegas street amidst the wreckage of a motorcycle, and in his place was someone much less fearsome and much less dangerous.

But the path to greatness often passes through depths unfathomable by most – an axiom that in this instance applies to Mir’s rebirth as a fighter. Renewed in his commitment to training and competing, he dispatched Antoni Hardonk at UFC 74 with a kimura in just a minute and 17 seconds, and when tasked with greeting the pro wrestling juggernaut Brock Lesnar in Lesnar’s UFC debut at UFC 81, Mir weathered a storm of leather to tap the giant out with a kneebar in a minute and a half. Suddenly, he was again in line for a shot at the title, albeit of the “interim” variety, and though few gave him a chance against the never-before-stopped Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, at UFC 92 Mir did the unthinkable and out-struck the former Pride superstar for the second-round TKO. Once more, Mir (now a jiu-jitsu black belt with exceptional kickboxing skills) was champ.

When Mir meets Lesnar at UFC 100, it will be more than a heated contest between two men eager to unify the MMA world’s most prestigious heavyweight title. And it will be more than just a submission specialist mixing it up with a monstrous wrestler he’s already beaten. At UFC 100, when Mir steps into that Octagon, it will be another milestone in a career jam-packed with peaks and valleys. But that’s what makes great stories great, no?