Here’s an exclusive UFC 100 interview with Frank Mir, being interviewed by Damon D of BetUS Radio.

Download Frank Mir UFC 100 Interview

I’m one of those people who believes that when you are handicapping sports there is nothing more important than information – just getting receiving it and processing it, but knowing how to interpret it. Call it “reading between the lines,” if you will.

If you are going to bet the main event at UFC 100 on Saturday night in Las Vegas, where Brock Lesnar meets up against the only fighter to ever beat him, Frank Mir, you want the benefit of all the information you can get. That’s why you’re going to want to listen to the interview Mir did with Damon D. of BetUS Radio

The legitimate question came up concerning whether Mir, having already been in the Octagon with Lesnar once, might want to put on some pounds against a man who was naturally bigger. Mir mentioned that his weight is around 246 pounds, when is well under the limit he imposed for himself, and that he’s not going to “play the game” of trying to be bigger and bulkier than his foe. “No matter what I’ve done over the last six months, it would silly for me to come in and think I could bench more than he can.”

Mir said that he wasn’t necessarily restricting his diet, but that when one trains every day on a schedule of five rounds of sparring and five rounds of wrestling. That has a tendency to take some calories off, making him leaner and leaner.

The sport of mixed martial arts has evolved to the point where a competitor cannot rely on just one skill to get him through fight after fight. Many disciplines are involved, and top-level fighters have to be versed in many of them. If there is a predominant edge for Mir in this fight, it’s that he is more well-rounded. Toward that end, there are a lot of people participating in his training camp.

“This is kind of like a mini-football camp,” he told Damon. “I have all these different specialists who help me out in every different area of the game, and each guy has something that he brings to the table for me.”

Mir admits it is not the easiest thing to prepare for Lesnar, who could outweigh him by over 30 pounds, although while conceding that his opponent is strong, he is not superhuman. “Sometimes people let their imagination get carried away with them,” he says.

Mir also indicated that because Lesnar is not the most experienced competitor (only four fights) he is concentrating on some things that Brock has not seen, with the objective of putting him in awkward positions. “It’s the mainstay of MMA,” he says.

He also pointed out that there are disciplines Lesnar is not all that familiar with. “I don’t care how much he’s trained in the past couple of months, he still hasn’t had as many competitions as I’ve had in MMA, and I’ve had fifty-plus competitions in submission wrestling itself. He hasn’t had any.”

You could tell from the interview that Mir is also placing an emphasis on striking. “Every time I watch a video on him, or see any highlights, all he (Lesnar) does is hit the pads,” he says. “That’s good, but there’s no substitute for putting on the headgear on and having a guy hit you.” That area of the game is where Mir thinks he is going to extract his greatest advantage.

Mir said he has been working on his boxing (striking), and that is something that, living in Las Vegas, he has ample opportunity to do because of the number of gyms and the plethora of fighters who come in and out of the city. There is no doubt he is mindful of Lesnar’s ability with the right hand, as he showed in his knockout of Randy Couture, but Mir has also looked impressive with his hands, showing that attribute in his title fight against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Mir also offered his opinion on the other championship scheduled for July 11 – the welterweight encounter between Georges St. Pierre and Thiago Alves. “If all goes according to game plan, I would have to lean toward St. Pierre.” However, he said he wouldn’t bet on the fight, recognizing that Alves’ strength and power will always keep him in the running, no matter how things are going.

This was not mentioned in the interview, but Mir also reportedly has an involvement with a revolutionary dietary supplement called Max GXL that offers higher energy by, among other things, increasing the glutathione that is in the system. In fact, John Nelson, former president of the American Medical Association, says it “represents the single most important breakthrough in health that I will witness in my life time.”

So I guess that’s another thing he’ll have going for him on Saturday night.

By Charles Jay