Tap or no tap, UFC Fight Night 85's Frank Mir doesn't care which you choose

BRISBANE, Australia – For ex-UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir, you can choose to submit or not. He’ll still be trying to knock you out or take a limb home.

“Whether you tap or not is really not my job,” he told reporters during a media scrum in support of his UFC Fight Night 85 headliner opposite Mark Hunt.

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk in the MMA world about tapping. To tap, or not to tap? That is the question.

After UFC 196, UFC featherweight champ Conor McGregor was blasted for capitulating to Nate Diaz, while now-former women’s bantamweight champ Holly Holm was praised for being choked unconscious by Miesha Tate.

So far, Mir has only been one side of the equation when it comes to submissions, forcing eight opponents to give up in the UFC. He hasn’t had to choose whether or not to go unconscious or suffer damage to his limbs. As a lifelong martial artist, though, he undoubtedly has submitted in the gym, and sees no dishonor in going so.

But at the same time, he’s not really invested in whether or not Hunt should give up if caught in a submission hold. He’s going to apply them the same, regardless of the why.

“At one of the gyms I was training at, one of the kids was talking and he said he put a guy in a choke and didn’t know why he didn’t tap,” Mir said. “I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong mentality.’ You should have asked why he didn’t fall asleep. It’s not why he didn’t tap. I don’t care if he tapped or not.

“Even if I’m training and you tap, I’ll ask you, ‘Hey, was it good, or did you just tap from pain?’ If you say pain, I don’t count that. That doesn’t matter.”

On Saturday, Mir (18-10 MMA, 16-10 UFC) will try to make Hunt (11-10-1 MMA, 6-4-1 UFC) his ninth UFC submission victim when they meet at Brisbane Entertainment Centre in Brisbane, Australia (main card fights air live on FOX Sports 1 while prelims go to FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass).

“When I land a shot or I look for a submission, I’m looking to be decisive and devastating,” Mir said. “If you tap, it just ends the result. But that’s not where my brain is. I’m just running through the line. My objective when I grab an armbar is to break an arm. Let’s face it. Why else are you slapping it on? If they tap, I’ll let it go. I’m not a malicious human being. But I think a lot of fighters get stuck in, ‘I’m trying to get him to tap.’”

Check out more from Mir in the video above, and watch the full video of his interview ahead of UFC Fight Night 85 below.

For more on UFC Fight Night 85, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

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