Frank Mir has protested his innocence after learning that he tested positive for steroids after a USADA test following his KO loss to Mark Hunt at UFC Fight Night 85 in Australia last month, but fears it could force him into retirement.
The former heavyweight champion is currently waiting on the result of the ‘B’ sample that USADA took at the same time. If it also comes back positive then Mir believes that his career will be over, as he believes it’ll be nearly impossible to prove his innocence.
“I know the lawyer and (manager Malki Kawa) are like, ‘We’ve got to figure out everywhere you ate and everything you put in your body for the past six weeks.’” Mir said on his ‘Phone Booth Fighting’ podcast. “Come on, man. Ask my wife, I’m lucky that I can figure out where the car is in the driveway half the time. There’s no way. I don’t remember. I don’t log things down like that.
It’s not been uncommon for fighters to blame tainted supplements when they test positive for a banned substance, and indeed Yoel Romero successfully had a two years suspension cut down to six months recently after successfully proving that was the case in his instance.
However, the 36 year-old UFC veteran is actually claiming that it could in fact be tainted Kangaroo meat he ate in Australia.
“let’s say someone could document where I went. You’re telling me USADA are gonna go down, and, on my behalf, try to test all the different meats to see if, well, you know, kanagaroos are wild and this guy wanted to beef em’ up so he bought something that was very abudnant – in the study that I did – oral turinabol could be bought in powdered form.
“You put it on the food and you bulk up your livestock, and you could sell it into the stores because now you get more bang for your buck. An animal that takes two years to reach maturity, you know, muscle weight, now in four months he’s bigger than he’s ever gonna be and you slaughter him. It’s a common practice.
“I don’t know, I’m not pointing the finger any where, I’m just saying there’s so many loopholes for me to sit there and go ‘where did it come from?’ Hell man, I don’t know, I really don’t. All I know is that I didn’t willingly take anything.”
With that in mind it looks like a two year suspension from the sport may well be on the horizon for Mir, and the consequences of that will be far reaching as he’s already been pulled from an analyst spot on tonight’s FOX Sports 1 pre and post-fight shows, and that would continue to be the case for the length of his ban.
That’s left the legendary fighter, who now equals Tito Ortiz for having the most fights in UFC history, facing the prospect of having to get a job outside of MMA.
“I’m a pretty well-spoken guy, but I don’t have a college education,” Mir said. “Me making money in other avenues is not going to be as easy as walking into the octagon.”
Mir has a couple of ideas of what line of work might interest him, though as of right now it seems he’s still just trying to get his head around the situation.
“Basically this is retirement for me. I don’t see any other way around it. That was probably my last time fighting. Retire and, I don’t know, I always wanted to be a police officer and I like the fire department. I don’t know, get into something else.”
