Bella Mir suffered the first loss of her professional MMA career Tuesday night, but UFC CEO Dana White believes the defeat could ultimately prove valuable for the NCAA national champion wrestler.
Mir, the daughter of former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir, entered her Dana White’s Contender Series matchup with Alex Apodaca as a heavy betting favorite. Instead, Apodaca secured a unanimous decision victory, handing Mir the biggest upset in the history of the series.
Despite the disappointing result, White praised Mir for the way she responded when faced with adversity inside the Octagon.
“Like (Michael) Bisping said, she didn’t have deep water experience, and now she does,” White said during the post-fight press conference. “She didn’t fold, she didn’t get stopped, she didn’t quit. This is all part of the game. To come in and just go undefeated, it’s very hard to do in this sport.”
White pointed to the importance of adversity in the development of elite fighters, noting that even some of the greatest competitors in UFC history have had to learn how to handle difficult moments early in their careers.
“That’s why when it’s done — like when we always talk about Jon Jones. He’s undefeated,” White said. “And when you think about the killers that Jon Jones fought when he was a young guy in this sport — and there’s more than just his physical attributes. There’s the mental.”
White specifically referenced Jones’ first fight with Alexander Gustafsson as an example of a fighter gaining experience in a challenging situation and learning from it.
“The first fight with Gustafsson, when he got his deep water experience, how he reacted to that and overcame it,” White said. “These are all things that are part of this game.”
