Brock Lesnar says Frank Mir is jealous of him
Published by Zach Arnold on July 7th, 2009 in Current Events

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Despite being the UFC Heavyweight champion, Brock Lesnar is a man who has a lot of people gunning for him in the MMA business. Every time you read an article about another fighter talking about him, it’s almost as if Lesnar is looked upon as this cancerous tumor on the business. It doesn’t matter if you read fighter interviews on Sherdog, MMA Weekly, or elsewhere, Lesnar is despised in many MMA circles. At times, you think that people look at him as if he gets the ‘silver spoon’ treatment because he became the Heavyweight champion after four fights.

Out of all of Lesnar’s critics, his most vociferous one is the man he is facing at UFC 100, Frank Mir. Mir won’t stop talking about how much better his training is than Lesnar’s, how much better he is as a fighter, and so on and so on. When you listen to Mir, he carries himself as if he’s the UFC Heavyweight champion and not Brock.

Brock’s response to Mir’s non-stop chattering?

“I think Frank just is covering up,” Lesnar recently stated in an interview with Steve Cofield & Smokin’ Dave Cokin on ESPN’s Las Vegas station. “I think Frank’s running his mouth, that’s a first sign of somebody that’s just flat out scared. And the bottom line is, after the first fight Frank admitted that he was getting ass beat, you know, I think people tend to forget about that, you know, I was at the press conference, you know, when Frank said you know, man I’ve never been hit that hard in my entire life and for me to hear that, to come from a guy after a fight, I would never you know, why would you even say something like that in the first place? But, here we are, a year and a half later, I don’t forget those things. I don’t forget that. It’s one of those things where, yeah, it’s coming and I think he’s scared. So he’s running his mouth and doing the best job that he can to protect himself in all different areas.”

Greg Nelson, who is the lead trainer for Brock in Minnesota, says that Mir was able to take advantage of a raw fighter when the two fighters had their first encounter a year ago.

“Well, first time they fought that was literally Brock’s second fight ever against a very very experienced Frank Mir and going in there, the intensity, you know, the fast pace it got to him, he got overcharged and he you know ran in there like a bull and got matador’d.”

Lesnar, who notoriously shelters himself away from the limelight, says that Mir is trash-talking him because he’s afraid of him.

“I’ve seen, I’ve seen these guys before, I’ve been competing my whole life and so I mean when that door gets shut come next Saturday night, July 11th, you know there’s nobody to run his mouth to and my fist is in it you’ll see a whole another side of Frank Mir.

“I’m not looking past this guy at all. He’s a tough opponent, he’s a slimy opponent, he’s a fighter that you know has been able to pull submissions out of his ass every know and again, so we’re just going to try to control this fight you know and I’ll strike him and control him on the ground and finish this thing where it should have been finished the first time, you know, it was a referee stoppage with my fist in his mouth.”

Nelson says that Lesnar will be a much more polished fighter heading into UFC 100 and that Mir will not be able to exploit as many weaknesses. Lesnar’s reportedly had a very intense training camp and has brought in a lot of different specialists to help him out with his skills.

“Yeah, he’s big you know, a big guy, but now it’s so different because he’s smarter and he brought in some of the best guys with (Rodrigo) Comprido for jiu-jitsu, a great jiu-jitsu guy, he has a 300-pound professional boxer came in from Arizona and so I mean he just brings in very good guys and he has the means to do so and he can set them up and then with him it’s an entirely different camp, you know, we got guys that cannot really cross-train with other guys because they’re 300 pounds plus and some of them are very good wrestlers, you know, four-time All-Americans national champions, great strikers and so they have this, their own little you know place that we all train them because they roll onto somebody it might be the end of someone’s career there. But yeah, it’s been a very smart development, he’s very patient and he understands that, hey, coaches have a big role here and really with Brock it’s easy, we go up there, we have a board, myself and Marty Morgan, we write down what’s going to happen in the practice and he says, ‘Let’s go.’ He doesn’t say, ‘Well, I want to do this instead.’ No, he knows that, ‘Hey, I got holes and you see them and I want to fill them in, I want to be good at this.’ ”

Obviously, the training strategy that Nelson and Lesnar are implementing is very different than what Mir and head trainer Ken Hahn is executing. Mir is training with smaller, well-conditioned Light Heavyweights who will test his limits and pick up his endurance. Lesnar is going for the opposite strategy by working with much stronger, bigger fighters. This is a classic match-up between strength and power versus speed and technique.

“Well I think this time around with Mir he’s an entirely different fighter,” said Nelson. “He’s now filled in a lot of those holes that he had when he first went in. Before he was a wrestler who had an incredible athleticism and he used it but he had some holes and he’s a little bit too wild in there that first time. Now he’s been in there a few more times, he’s very composed, he has an ability to find how to land those big big giant mullets that he has on his hands, you know, that’s going to be the thing right there. Once he lands one of those shots, you know, one big shot can change the fight and he has the ability to do that at all times.”

Despite being the champion, Lesnar has taken a significant amount of criticism from fighters and others inside the MMA community. Is he a paper champion? Is he inexperienced? Does he really belong as UFC’s company ‘ace’? Obviously, fans believe he does because he’s by far UFC’s most solid PPV draw outside of Chuck Liddell. Lesnar says that the reason he gets criticized is because people are jealous of him.

“I understand that Frank has every right to be jealous of me, you know, I understand. I’ve been dealing with jealous people my whole life, you know, so I’ve been the underdog, I’ve been the guy on top, and I’ll continue to be on top here so, no it doesn’t bother me. Like I said, he’s out running his mouth because there’s a lot of insecurities, you know, he’s an insecure guy and so I’m not making fun of his trainers or you know making fun of him or anything, you know, he’s a respectable fighter and you know, so it’s one of those things I just feel a lot of insecurities about him and I understand that he has every right to be jealous. You know, just two fights in, I’m the heavyweight champ and he’s mentioned that I get paid more than he does, he’s got every right to be jealous, and jealousy tends to you know to overwhelm and run the mouth quite frequently so I’ve been there before.”

One of Lesnar’s biggest critics has been Tim Sylvia, who felt that Lesnar got a push by UFC management because he was an ex-WWE star. Since losing to Ray Mercer in 10 seconds in Alabama, Sylvia is now everyone’s favorite whipping boy. Lesnar laughs at Sylvia’s comments about him being ‘bad for the sport’ right after Sylvia lost to a 48-year old boxer.

“That really says a lot for the sport there, let me tell you, ouch. Just keep taking your foot out of your mouth there, Swamp Thing, you know it’s one of those things where this guy doesn’t deserve anything and then all of a sudden now it’s jealousy, now it’s… I’ve been dealing with this my whole life so I keep my nose to the grindstone and keep training hard, stay focused… I just stay focused to the task in front of me, I don’t… all of these things you are bringing up, this the first time I heard them, that’s why I don’t surf the Internet, I don’t read magazines, I don’t even read my own articles, I’m not a mark or a fan of myself like these other fighters get and you know they get all goofy in their heads and you know believe everything they read. I haven’t never done that, so… I really don’t care. I’m doing what I love to do, I enjoy my lifestyle, I enjoy my job and you know I could give two whatevers about whatever anybody thinks about me, you know.”

In a recent interview with Cofield, Mir said that he is around 255 pounds in training camp and that he likely will not have to cut any weight to make the 265-pound limit. Lesnar says that he, too, probably won’t have any trouble cutting to make weight.

“I just got done working out and my weight is really good, after practice today I was 269. I feel really good. I could step into the Octagon right now. I’m ready to go.”

Lesnar’s trainer, Greg Nelson, views his top fighter as one of the best he’s ever trained and developed in such a short amount of time.

“Yeah, Brock is an extremely gifted athlete. The guy moves like a lightweight and all it was basically is getting the right guys to work with him and start plugging in the holes and he just soaks stuff up, so you know bringing in Comprido and some of these other, three other black belt Brazilian guys who are very big, that’s been great because now that’s kind of taken that element into our favor I think again he’s really learned how to counter a lot of stuff and the submission skills are getting very well rounded as well. We brought in Erik Paulson, very well-rounded as far as striking, submission, just has a very unique approach to the game and so he’s been helping out a lot, too. And of course, you know, he always has that wrestling background that’s again continues to get stronger because we got again guys that are even bigger than him who are two-time undefeated NCAA national champs, four-time All Americans that are in there all the time with him, and so it’s been a fun ride with him and he’s also one of those guys who really knows the meaning of ‘take care of those who take care of you’ and that’s the biggest pleasure working with that guy right there.”