Frank Mir speaks to the media during the press conference for UFC 146 in the lobby of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Thursday, May 24, 2012.
Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015 | 2 a.m.
Related Coverage
Frank and Jennifer Mir at the Cartier VIP reception at MGM CityCenter's Crystals for Nevada Ballet Theatre's 27th Annual Black and White Ball on Jan. 29, 2011. Priscilla Presley was honored as NBT's Woman of the Year.
Frank Mir couldn’t decide on a future for his career after losing his fourth straight fight a year ago, so his wife decided for him.
Jennifer Mir didn’t think it was time for the veteran local heavyweight to retire after losing a unanimous-decision to Alistair Overeem at UFC 169 as he had briefly pondered, but she knew it was time to rest.
“She put her foot down and said, ‘I absolutely refuse for you to take a fight in the next six months. If you take a fight in the next six months, I will leave you,’” Frank Mir reminisced. “She wasn’t going to leave me, but she was trying to catch my attention.”
Attention caught. The 35-year-old Mir took the second longest hiatus of his career, behind only the 20 months he needed to recover from a motorcycle accident that sprung him 80 feet into the air in 2004.
Mir (16-9 MMA, 14-9 UFC) returns to the octagon for the first time in more than a year Sunday against Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva (18-5-1 MMA, 2-3 UFC) in the main event of UFC Fight Night 61 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Fox Sports 1 televises the card beginning at 3 p.m.
Mir risks termination from his UFC contract with a fifth consecutive defeat. He’s aware of the stakes, which is why he’s so thankful that Jennifer Mir’s intervention restored his body to its freshest state in years.
“It’s very hard for fighters to sit back and step out,” Mir explained. “The one thing that enables us to step into the cage is an ability to lie to ourselves … I always felt I could overcome anything, but my wife was the smarter one.”
After losing to Junior dos Santos in a failed bid to win a third UFC heavyweight tile in 2012, Mir said he had six surgeries between his next three fights. None were major procedures, but he regularly rushed back to training more quickly than doctor’s orders and kept taking fights.
He would alter his preparation to work around the ailments. Mir, for example, remembers a herniated disk preventing him from wrestling at one point so he trained exclusively from the clinch.
The toll was just as significant on his personal life. Mir described going through a “30-minute ritual” to get out of bed every morning. Jennifer Mir joked that if their house caught on fire, he’d never make it out in time.
The severity of Frank Mir’s state registered with him when he went to a yoga class with his wife, and struggled with the most rudimentary techniques.
“There was no way the body of a man in his 30s should be moving like that,” Frank Mir said. “I realized my general fitness, mobility and being injury-free was very poor. All the dings and not addressing the recovery right afterwards really caught up to me.”
For the first couple months after losing to Overeem, Mir was exclusively a family man. He spent time with his children and never thought about dedicating himself to the gym.
He gradually began a more defined offseason program than he had ever undergone, and started to feel he was in fighting shape and ready to take a bout late last summer. Much to Frank Mir’s frustration at the time, Jennifer Mir shot the idea down.
“I was like, ‘Fine, I might as well retire,’” Frank Mir said. “She said, ‘Tell everyone you’re retired if that’s what it takes to bring you out of the ring for a year.’ But I couldn’t even say the word at the time because I was worried that was what she was leading me to.”
But Jennifer Mir came around as she saw Frank Mir get healthier, and the couple mutually agreed they were ready to schedule a fight last October. Frank Mir worried that the UFC wouldn’t be receptive because of his losing streak, but matchmaker Joe Silva offered Bigfoot Silva almost immediately.
After bouncing around to different gyms the last few years, Mir stayed home in Las Vegas for this camp. He enlisted several new coaches, though the most important influencer was a fixture in his corner — Jennifer Mir.
“She was very worried about my health and well-being, so she stayed on me,” Mir said. “It’s not like it was one conversation.”
Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy