Nogueira vs Mir II announced for UFC 119
Ultimate Fighting Championships President Dana White has confirmed to MMAfighting.com that the rumoured fight between Frank Mir and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira will be headlining UFC 119 in Indianapolis.
The news comes just after reports that Nogueira’s twin brother, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira will be fighting in the co-main event against Ryan Bader. Rodrigo’s match will be a rematch of his fight at UFC 92, where he was stopped in the second round after having been knocked down four times.
A way to settle the controversy
Their UFC 92 match came after both men were opposing coaches on season eight of the UFC’s reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. Rodrigo Nogueira was the Interim Heavyweight Champion with his defeat of Tim Sylvia at UFC 81, and had come in as a 3-1 favourite. Nogueira was long known for his legendary chin and had never been stopped. His boxing was generally regarded as being superior, and even Mir’s strong suit, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, was viewed as being inferior to that of the legendary Brazilian.
Instead Mir dominated the fight from bell-to-bell, showing faster hands and, most shockingly, managing to continually knock down the strong-chinned Nogueira and finally, for the first time ever, succeeded in stopping Nogueira by TKO.
After the fight, White told reporters that Nogueira had been recovering from a debilitating staph infection, which had him in the hospital 20 days before the fight. Even a mild case of staph, which saps the body of energy, is enough for most fighters to pull out of a fight, but Nogueira fought regardless, and this was later pegged as the reason he put in such a lacklustre performance.
While Mir doubted Nogueira’s excuse, the Brazilian’s next performance seemed to give credence to what he had said, as he defeated Randy Couture and looked like a completely different fighter in his next fight. His legendary chin was back, as he took stiff shots from Couture but still managed to stay standing and nearly finish Couture multiple times.
This fight will be a way for Nogueira to show he can beat Mir at full strength, and for Mir to show Nogueira’s first loss had nothing to do with staph.
Both men coming in off losses
Despite the two heavyweights being chosen to headline the card, both these men are coming off of first-round TKO losses.
Mir, still holding the interim championship he won from Nogueira, went to fight heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar to unify the two belts, but was utterly crushed by Lesnar and battered for two rounds until he was knocked out.
He rebounded though with a quick submission victory over French kickboxer Cheick Kongo at UFC 107, catching the Frenchman with a hard punch to knock him down, and then as Kongo attempted to scramble to his feet Mir applied a guillotine choke and tapped him unconscious in just over a minute.
Based on the strength of that performance, Mir was given a shot against Shane Carwin to once again fight for an interim heavyweight championship. Coming into the fight as a slight favourite, Mir was instead flattened by several short uppercuts in the first round, forcing the ref to stop the fight.
After his impressive victory over Couture, Nogueira went on to fight Cain Velasquez at UFC 110 to gain a show at the title. Instead though he was knocked out in the first round, and got stopped for just the second-time in his career.
While Nogueira has had a legendary career, his fight against Velasquez shows that the massive amounts of punishment he’s taken over the course of his career may have slowed him down and weakened his ability to take punishment. Both of these fighters are in their thirties, and this fight may present the last chance for either of them to make a run at the title.
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