Mir cites ego in loss to Fedor

Frank Mir is one of the greatest submission artists in heavyweight MMA history, maybe the greatest. Fedor Emelianenko is one of the greatest strikers in heavyweight MMA history, maybe the greatest. Thus when the two fought at Bellator 198, Mir might reasonably have been expected to try to take it the mat, not trade.

However, Fedor came off the floor and executed a tremendous hip toss on Mir. And then, as Mir candidly described during a recent episode of his Phone Booth Fighting podcast, ego got the best of him.

That kinda hurt my ego. I gotta admit, it embarrassed me to get tossed through the air like that, said Mir, as transcribed by Ken Pishna for MMA Weekly. So when we got up, I kind of went into street fighter mode. I just started throwing left hand after left hand instead of setting up my strikes and being composed, which, two years since I’ve competed seriously, my composure was not what it should’ve been.

That’s probably where the most ring rust came into it, is once I got into a firefight, I just got emotional instead of staying strategic.”

I lost my cool. I let my ego dictate how I fought. Before that, I’m pretty good at being very emotionless and not trying to let that enter it. Once I got thrown through the air, and it was such a highlight-reel kind of throw, my ego was very injured.

Mir has fought for nearly 20 years, and was out for two years with an anti-doping violation. Bellator plans for him to fight again in October, but Mir wants to fight sooner, for Russia’s Absolute Championship Berkut, as he has contractual permission to do.

[Bellator is] talking about October. I’m like, okay, that’s cool, I would like to get a fight in with ACB before that so I can just get more time clocked under me, so I can get my timing back on for fighting, said Mir.

There’s nothing like it. We can train as much as you want, but there’s nothing like the real thing. I’ve had 40 seconds in the last two years, so I need some more time, some more rounds.