UFC interim heavyweight champion Frank Mir confirms in the above interview with bodybuilding.com that he'd like to push back his scheduled fight with Brock Lesnar at UFC 98 because he recently had knee surgery.
Asked when his fight with Lesnar will be, Mir says, "Hopefully the summertime. It was May 23 but I needed to get a scope done to my knee, so I got it done immediately last week. It would be rushing to try to fight that soon because I can't really train for four to six weeks as far as sparring and wrestling and the real forms of training. I can hit the treadmill, but that's not a good idea, to get in shape for a fight on a treadmill."
That sounds to me like Mir is leaving a little bit of wiggle room: He hopes to push the fight back to the summer, but the UFC might be able to persuade him to take the fight on May 23 as scheduled. He says he can't train for four to six weeks, but UFC 98 is in 11 weeks. That doesn't give him enough time to make a complete recovery and then have an eight-week training camp, but the UFC might tell him he needs to tough it out, even if he's not at 100 percent.
Mir also indicates in the video that he doesn't think highly of Lesnar, and that he doesn't think Lesnar earned the title shot he got against Randy Couture.
"Lucky guy, he only won one fight and he got a title shot," Mir said. "Obviously, we have a score to settle. ... I want to choke him unconscious until he does the fish on the ground."