The UFC heavyweight division is a pretty weird place right now.
Weirder than normal, even.
It was hard to shake that strangeness on Wednesday night, watching 36-year-old UFC lifer Frank Mir fell 29-year-old powerhouse Todd Duffee like a stick of lumber in the main event of Fight Night 71.
The 265-pound class has long been one of the oldest, shallowest wells on the roster. This year, however, it’s starting to seem like—to borrow a phrase from new interim featherweight champ Conor McGregor—the distinguished elders of the heavyweight division aren’t just here to take part.
They’re here to take over.
Mir’s victory over Duffee was his second first-round stoppage in a row and his second this year, extending an improbable turnaround after he went 0-4 from 2012 to 2014. Even Mir seemed a bit surprised about how it all went down once he had a few minutes to reflect on it.
“I was trying to be more intelligent, but today my emotion got the best of me leading up to the fight,” Mir said at the post-fight press conference. “I just bit down on my mouthpiece and wanted to make a statement. I kept hearing ‘old and crafty,’ so I guess I was kind of dumb tonight and just wanted to show young and brash.”
It didn’t hurt his cause that Duffee charged out of his corner wildly to the point of being totally out of control.
He winged punches from his back pocket and—in his berserk rage—it seemed to slip his mind that Mir often fights as a lefty. Duffee ran right into a series of southpaw counterpunches until a short hook finally shuttered his shop windows for good just 73 seconds into a fight scheduled for five rounds.
As play-by-play announcer Jon Anik noted while he took the cage, Mir is the longest-tenured active fighter on the UFC’s roster, an incredible feat in a sport where it often feels like athletes blow in and out with the wind.
These days, the UFC hires and fires so many fighters that there is a Twitter bot solely dedicated to keeping track of them.
Mir is the ultimate exception to that trend. He made his promotional debut in November 2001 and has run off a streak of 25 straight fights in the Octagon—interrupted only by occasional injury and the 2004 motorcycle accident that almost ended his career.
He twice won a version of the company’s heavyweight title and never fought in Pride, Strikeforce or Bellator. He never got released, never had to go back to the independent circuit to rebuild or retool. In a career full of impressive accolades, perhaps that one is the most extraordinary of all.
Make no mistake, Mir did publicly rebuild and retool himself. In fact, he did it perhaps more often than any other MMA fighter we’ve ever seen.
He just did it during an essentially continuous run on the sport’s biggest stage.
After taking nearly two years off to recover from his accident, Mir returned looking bloated and utterly finished in losses to Marcio Cruz and Brandon Vera. He seemed like a shadow of his former self in a win over Dan Christison.
Much later, after a loss to Brock Lesnar at UFC 100, Mir packed on extra muscle to try to compete with the giants of the heavyweight division. It only kind of worked.
Since then, his career has basically been one long period of experimentation—with different fighting styles and his weight. He even toyed with cutting to light heavyweight for a time before ultimately deciding it was impossible.
Recent years were unkind to him. He lost a stretch of bouts to high-profile opponents Junior Dos Santos, Daniel Cormier, Josh Barnett and Alistair Overeem. This year, however, he’s rebounded by stopping Anthony Hamilton and now Duffee in the first round with a surprisingly adept striking attack.
Mir came into this bout listed at No. 10 on the official UFC rankings, and he will certainly improve on that the next time the lists are updated.
His resurgence would be remarkable even if it happened in a vacuum. Instead, he’s just part of a larger renaissance going on in the sport’s heaviest weight class.
Fabricio Werdum is suddenly on top of the world. At age 37 and almost seven years after he parted ways with the UFC in the wake of an unexpected loss to Dos Santos, he recently won the heavyweight title from the much younger Cain Velasquez.
Werdum is now in the conversation as the greatest heavyweight of all time.
At 36, Andrei Arlovski is back too as the winner of three straight in the Octagon and garnering serious consideration as a potential No. 1 contender. Just a few years ago, it seemed like his career would end amid the shambles of his own four-fight losing streak.
Barnett (37), Mark Hunt (41) and Overeem (35) are all clinging to top-10 status. Roy Nelson (39) is hovering right there at No. 11.
Even Ben Rothwell (ranked No. 7) seems to have finally found the best possible version of himself at a spry and youthful 33. Who would’ve thought that was going to happen as he scuffed to 3-4 through what should have been the heart of his athletic prime from 2009-13?
It’s essentially a whole division full of guys proving they’re not too old to make one final push for greatness. In the conspicuous absence of a new generation of young prospects, the senior tour is making itself at home.
Count Mir among those on the upswing.
With a modest 2-0 streak underway, perhaps it’s a stretch to think he’s got one more title run left in him.
If he does, however, we can’t say it would be a surprise. Or even an anomaly. And at least he’d have to do it by picking on guys his own age.
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