Former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir will be coming off perhaps the most difficult loss of his career when he steps in against Cheick Kongo at UFC 107 next Saturday on Dec 12. The talented heavyweight was completely manhandled in his battle with UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar at UFC 100 in July, and admits that he underestimated parts of Lesnar's game.
"I expected the fight to be at a little more of a wild pace," Mir told the UFC. "I thought Brock would stand up with me a little bit more. He didn't. I can't fault him for that as he has to do what it takes to win the fight. He took me down, and on the ground he was nowhere near as wild as he's been in the past. I thought there would be a lot of opportunities on my back and there really wasn't. He did a great job of out-positioning me on the ground. And just adding on the fact of his superior size and strength was the icing on the cake."
Mir looks to rebound against one of the division's best strikers in Kongo, and is well aware of his strengths and weaknesses.
"He has a great reach and a good right hand," Mir said. "He has sound stand-up with some great knees. Obviously his wrestling is not probably the best. I think his strength and athleticism help him a lot in those areas. His ground-and-pound is actually pretty dangerous. I think it's not given enough credit and he's pretty well conditioned."
Mir believes that while Kongo's heart can not be questioned, his path to victory may lie in Kongo's lack of technique.
"Even when he takes a bad beating, he still stays in there. The fight with Cain Velasquez, he was getting mauled for 15-minutes and he didn't really look like he threw in the towel. He just had very poor technique and didn't know how to answer."
On his feet however, Kongo's answer is to put butts on the canvas. The Frenchman has knocked out three of his past four opponents and counts 10 knockouts among his 14 total victories.
"I don't really have anything to prove by standing up with him, but that's where he could do the most damage in the fight," Mir said. "That's where he's gonna feel the most comfortable and where he will be most relaxed. That's what he does best."
Instead of standing and trading with the powerful striker, Mir instead will look to take him down to the ground where he can employ his world class jiu-jitsu skills to look for a tapout.
"Nobody is shocked by the fact that his ground game is amongst some of the worst ground game we have in the heavyweight division," Mir said. "I hope to take advantage of that. I feel that I'm pretty decent on the ground and looking to make myself even better. If I grab him and get him to the ground, that definitely plays into my advantage. Every time he throws a kick and I catch it, and it doesn't knock me out -- well, he's going down. That's going to limit a lot of his technique. It's a 15-minute fight and I hope to take him down one time and that will be the end of it."
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