Rejuvenated Frank Mir Interested in Rubber Match with Brock Lesnar

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After a lopsided decision loss to Alistair Overeem at UFC 169, Frank Mir thought he was at the end of the line.

It was his fourth consecutive defeat in the Octagon, and while all those setbacks came against top-tier foes, the former heavyweight ruler began to seriously contemplate a career change.

“After the Alistair Overeem fight I had a meeting with [UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta] and told him I’m done. Let me look at doing broadcasting,” Mir said at Sunday’s post-fight press conference. “And then my wife laughed at me. She said, ‘Take my advice and let’s not do anything or talk about fighting for six months and you just let your body heal.’”

As it turned out, Mir’s wife knew what she was talking about. Mir earned his first Octagon triumph since 2011 by knocking out Antonio Silva in the first frame at the UFC Fight Night headliner in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A left hook dropped “Bigfoot” and a barrage of follow-up elbows on the ground sealed the triumph at the 1:40 mark.

In the aftermath, Mir quipped that the seeds for his comeback were sown on a yoga mat months earlier.

“I went to yoga with [my wife], so we did a yoga class and I’m taping up my elbows, wrists and knees. And I look like I’m getting ready to fight somebody,” Mir said. “I did it for about 10 minutes and I couldn’t even hold downward facing dog because there was so much pain. I’m looking at all these soccer moms kicking my butt. I’m like, ‘My overall fitness kind of sucks right now.’

“I’m so banged up and beat up. I have quite a few fights in the UFC, and I’ve been going for a quite a few years,” he continued. “And to compound that I’m a heavyweight, so there’s quite a bit of wear and tear. So I followed her advice and took a bunch of time off and even then, I wasn’t convinced I was coming back.”

Mir then began working with a gymnastics coach, who eventually had him performing a multitude of athletic tasks.

“He started having me do cartwheels and handstands, and I almost got to the point where I could do a flip,” Mir said.

From there, Mir also began working with his MMA team, but he credits the addition of boxing coach Angelo Reyes as “the last piece of the puzzle.”

“He switched me back to orthodox,” Mir said. “That’s when I realized boxing is underutilized in our sport because we don’t have a lot of great boxing trainers.

Now, feeling refreshed from the time off, Mir sounds like a man ready to resume his career. If the rumors of WWE superstar and ex-UFC champ Brock Lesnar’s return to the Octagon eventually prove true, Mir would definitely be interested in a third meeting with his former rival.

“I think it’d be a huge big fight,” he said. “I think it’s something that would catapult my name even higher. A rubber match between the two of us would be a phenomenal fight. To keep that anywhere in the works, I had to get a win tonight.”