Frank Mir believes his daughter, Bella, has all the tools to go down as one of the sport’s all-time greats.
18-year-old Bella Mir is already 2-0 as a professional, picking up a pair of victories under the iKon FF banner. Frank said that initially, he was opposed to the idea of his daughter going in to the family business due to how little fighters make. However, he eventually grew into liking the idea of having his daughter follow in his footsteps. Now that he has seen what Bella is capable of inside the cage, Mir told Just Scrap Radio that he is confident she will go down as one of the best to ever do it (Transcribed by BJPenn.com).
“It’s beautiful to watch your child do something they love and get recognition for it and be successful. I’m happy about that,” Frank Mir said. “Obviously, being a professional fighter, it’s not the injuries that scare me, it’s making a living out of it. You are not working on your business during a fight career so you are putting all your eggs in one basket. That’s scary to me because of the financial payback, there is a lot of luck involved.
“You might blow your knee out before a big fight, you might get caught and that was your chance for a title shot,” Mir continued. “Like Conor McGregor doesn’t have the accolades that Demetrious Johnson as pure as a mixed martial artist, like Johnson, is the better fighter. But, who makes more money? It’s not even close, it’s not even in the same ballpark. That’s the scary part because financial security is not easy. She wants to do it, so I’m either going to sit on the sidelines or be a part of it and try to make sure she can be the best she can be.”
While Bella Mir has been training at Syndicate MMA, Frank has still been offering his daughter advice on her career. He knows major organizations will be eager to sign her based on her last name alone, but he doesn’t want her rushing to sign with the UFC. Instead, he hopes his daughter will take the time to develop her skills and reach her full potential before making the leap.
“Right now, there are a lot of people saying let’s go to the UFC right now and as a father, I’m putting on the brakes,” Mir said. “Let’s not get ahead of herself. She’s talented, tough, smart, she has everything going and she checks off every box to be a world champion, a Hall of Famer. Anyone getting in there too soon is not good.”
While Frank is excited to cheer on his daughter during her career, he’s hoping for one last moment in his. He hopes to one day fight on the same card as Bella, and have the event serve as a symbolic passing of the torch as he moves on to retirement.
“One of my ambitions I have said and I would really like to stick to it, is I would like to fight on the same card as my daughter,” Mir said. “That would be a great father-daughter experience and how many people can say they’ve done that in their career? Compete as an athlete on the same playing field as their child. It would be a moment of passing the torch of the ending of my career and the starting of her career. I would have to make it an MMA fight to make that happen.”
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