UFC 92- Ultimate Fighter Season 8 Coaches Showdown

Both Frank Mir and Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogeuira have had to overcome incredible challenges in their lives to become championship-caliber heavyweight fighters. Mir got hit by a car on his motorcycle and snapped his leg in half while Nogueira was ran over by a truck as a kid, causing damage to his internal organs.

But on December 27th in Las Vegas at UFC 92, Mir will have the toughest challenge of the two as he tries to take the Interim Heavyweight Championship belt from Nogeuira. You can hear it in the way Mir talks about the former PRIDE legend: he knows it’s going to be tough to pull off the upset.

Mir compares Nogeuira to a zombie or Frankenstein because he’s so hard to put away in a fight and in a five-round title fight, that gives Nogueira plenty of chances to pull off one of his patented submissions. The odds in this contest are +225 for Mir compared to -350 for Nogeuira, and in a fight like this where both men are highly-skilled jiu-jitsu practitioners, it would seem like Mir is worth throwing a few bucks on, right?

Well, the problem with that is no one really knows how Mir can actually win this fight. Mir says his plan is to do what “everyone else does,” to beat up Nogeuira early in the fight and then just stick with that plan and avoid getting caught in order to win a decision. Nogueira has never been knocked out or submitted so getting a decision seems like the only way Mir could win on paper.

Unfortunately for Mir, Nogueira is a superior stand-up fighter to Mir with his pinpoint boxing skills. Mir was overwhelmed on his feet by Brock Lesnar, who came into that fight with just one MMA bout under his belt. Nogueira can turn this fight into a pure boxing match and win on points easily.

Mir was referring to the Tim Sylvia fight perhaps when talking about Nogeuira, and Sylvia is one of the better boxers in the UFC, bringing a huge reach advantage on Minotauro in that fight. Both Fighters are similar builds so the tale of the tape will provide no distinct advantage.

With that in mind, Mir’s best shot might be to land a heavy punch or two on Minotauro and then pounce on him for some ground-and-pound. He can to try and sneak in a submission, but the latter is not likely to happen against Nogeuira, who is perhaps the best MMA grappler in the world. Mir is said to be training harder than ever before, but he’s looked out-of-shape in most of his post-accident fights while Minotauro’s cardio is legendary.

This is shaping up to be a win for Minotauro by a decision or maybe even a submission despite how good Mir is on the ground. While no one’s likely to make a killing off of a Minotauro bet, it’s one of the safest bets people can make on the entire UFC 92 card because he’s more skilled than Mir in just about every facet of the game.