Mir, Noguiera get TUF 8 nods

Spike TV announced Monday that UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and former champion Frank Mir will be the coaches for season eight of The Ultimate Fighter.

The show, which is being taped May 18-June 28 in Las Vegas, will air from September until early December and build to a championship match between the coaches, most likely on the annual New Year’s Eve weekend card.

Randy Couture, who quit UFC and is in the midst of litigation over his contract, is currently recognized as heavyweight champion. But unless he returns, which he has often said he will never do, Nogueira will almost surely be recognized as champion by the time the shows start airing.

Nogueira, 31-4-1, should be considered the second-best heavyweight in the history of mixed martial arts, behind only Fedor Emelianenko, who handed Nogueira two of those four losses, both by decision. Nogueira has never been stopped in a fight; his other losses were a split decision to Josh Barnett in 2006 that he later avenged, and a split decision to Dan Henderson in 2000, a questionable decision, and one that he also avenged.

Since most of his career was spent in Japan, Nogueira was almost an unknown to UFC fans when, in his second match in the promotion, he came from behind to finish Tim Sylvia with a guillotine and win the interim title on the same Feb. 2 show Mir beat Brock Lesnar.

“I knew him as a fan and I idolized him,” said Mir, who was just starting in the sport during the 18-month period Nogueira reigned as the first PRIDE heavyweight champion.

Nogueira and Mir are two of the best heavyweight submission artists in MMA. They are as comfortable as any two heavyweights in fighting from their back. Mir feels attacking Nogueira’s legs standing with low kicks will be a key part of his strategy. But based on record, Nogueira should go in as a solid favorite.

Mir, who will likely come into the fight 10-20 pounds lighter than his opponent, feels Nogueira’s technical boxing is underrated, noting his hand speed and the way he puts together combinations. Mir thinks the two are even when it comes to wrestling, which is an area he’s working on improving so it’ll be to his advantage.

The UFC feels exposure on the show will make Nogueira more marketable as champion, in particular the telling of his life story – including being run over by a car while a child – combined with video clips of his wins

Nogueira’s career strength, which at some point down the line may also be his undoing, is his durability. He’s taken many beatings in the ring, but has never been finished. He’s noted for comeback wins; he was put down in both of his UFC fights, including Heath Herring nearly knocking him cold with a kick to the head in the first round of a fight Nogueira came back to win via decision in July, 2007.

In Japan, the best remembered moment of his career was a spot replayed repeatedly on network television from a 2002 fight before an MMA world record audience of 71,000 fans in Tokyo. Three hundred seventy-pound Bob Sapp picked Noguiera up and spiked him on the ground, but he survived the onslaught and came back to win via armbar.

But even though Nogueira is only 31, all that punishment adds up over the course of a career. It did appear Noguiera’s reflexes and recovery time when being hit by Sylvia before Nogueira rallied to win by submission.

There will likely be some controversy over the decision to give Mir the next title shot, because it’s largely based on his 90-second win over Lesnar.

It turned out to be one of the company’s highest profile fights ever due to Lesnar’s reputation from pro wrestling. To a lot of UFC fans, Mir was representing their sport against an outsider, making him a huge crowd favorite that night.

After being pummeled for almost the entire fight, Mir came from behind to catch Lesnar with a kneebar submission to win. In winning such a high profile match, Mir came out of it as the company’s most popular heavyweight fighter in the wake of Couture’s departure.

But Lesnar was inexperienced as an MMA style fighter and many would question whether a win over an inexperienced fighter, no matter how good Lesnar may turn out to be, should allow someone to leapfrog over contenders that were generally considered to be ranked ahead of him.

“It was a shortcut that put me back into title contention,” said Mir.

“Before that fight I was in a preliminary bout and because of Lesnar, I got to fight in the main event.”

Mir is upset that many downplay the win over Lesnar, from those who say it didn’t mean much because Lesnar had one fight, to those who think Mir won it easily, saying he took a real beating and thinks the only kind of fighter who could beat Lesnar is someone who can submit him off his back.

“You think some kickboxer is going to beat him?” he asked. “No kickboxer is going to be able to stop his double (-leg takedown). There was a time when nobody in the country in wrestling could stop it.”

Mir said the match taught him two lessons. The first is to incorporate heavy lifting into his training, because of how Lesnar overpowered him, noting that even though he won, the idea that technique will always overcome a huge edge in power is bunk. The second was it taught him Nogueira’s best trait: mental toughness under adversity.

Mir, 11-3, noted he was something of a front-runner in that he didn’t do well mentally, whether in competition or even at times in practice, when things weren’t going his way. But he said the first minute of the Lesnar fight was pure hell, and he considers it a major step because he knows in himself that at no time was he even thinking of quitting.

The eighth season of The Ultimate Fighter will return to the show’s original format of tournaments in two weight classes, with eight lightweights and eight light heavyweights vying for UFC contracts.