Dana White believes Bella Mir just learned a big lesson.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, Mir squared off with Alex Apodaca in the main event of Week 3 of Contender Series. The bout was supposed to be an exhibition for Mir, who entered the bout as the biggest betting favorite in the history of the program, and one of the biggest in MMA history. But with only four fights to her name, Mir\u2019s inexperience caught up to her, and Apodaca authored one of the biggest upsets in MMA history, stymying Mir for the better part of the fight and piling up damage on the feet en route to a unanimous decision win.<\/p>\n
The loss sends Mir back to the drawing board and shocked UFC CEO Dana White, who has been a longtime supporter of Mir.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was extremely biased coming into tonight,\u201d White told reporters during the post-show press conference. \u201cI\u2019ve been close to her for over four years. Four years ago she came to me and wanted to sort of map out her future. I\u2019m the one that talked her into going to college and waiting; get a wrestling background in college, do some great things there, and then come here. You guys all heard what her goals were over the next several years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd again, like I said out there, Bisping absolutely nailed it and said the difference in this fight is deep water. Bella\u2019s never been there, and Alex has.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heading into the fight, Mir was viewed as one of the best prospects in women\u2019s MMA. The daughter of former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir, Bella Mir is also an NCAA national champion wrestler and an accomplished grappler. Still, at just 23 years old and only four fights into her MMA career, Mir has a lot of learning to do in the fight game, and White believes she just got a big lesson.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike Bisping said, she didn\u2019t have deep water experience, and now she does,\u201d White said. \u201cShe didn\u2019t fold, she didn\u2019t get stopped, she didn\u2019t quit. This is all part of the game. To come in and just go undefeated, it\u2019s very hard to do in this sport. That\u2019s why when it\u2019s done \u2014 like when we always talk about Jon Jones. He\u2019s undefeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when you think about the killers that Jon Jones fought when he was a young guy in this sport \u2014 and there\u2019s more than just his physical attributes. There\u2019s the mental. The first fight with Gustafsson, when he got his deep water experience, how he reacted to that and overcame it. These are all things that are part of this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for what comes next, that depends on Mir. White has been open about his affinity for Mir, and the UFC has long ties to her, sponsoring her NIL deal in college and having her compete several times for UFC BJJ. And while he didn\u2019t expressly say it, when asked if Mir might make another appearance on Contender Series this year, White seemed open to the idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s up to her and her father,\u201d White said. \u201cThat\u2019s up to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dana White believes Bella Mir just learned a big lesson. On Tuesday night, Mir squared off with Alex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-872237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}