BY JAMES BRYDON
sportsnet.ca

INDIANAPOLIS -- Frank Mir knows if he has one weakness in his game it’s his wrestling. So he made it a point during his preparation for UFC 119 to ensure that it’s not the one area his opponent will be able to exploit.

“Especially with the influx of a lot of great wrestlers that have come into the UFC, wrestling his my Achilles’ heel,” Mir said at Thursday’s press conference. “So I’ve worked on it extensively.”

Mir brought in to his training camp a couple of guys with strong credentials in Mike Whitehead, a three-time all-American and MMA fighter himself, as well as Ricky Lundell, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt under Pedro Sauer who also wrestled at Iowa State University with 2004 Olympic gold-medallist Cael Sanderson.

Of course, Mir’s original preparation was for Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, a black belt in both jiu-jitsu and judo. Now he’ll be facing Mirko (Cro Cop) Filipovic, whose strengths are in striking and kickboxing.

While a solid wrestling base is beneficial against both styles in order to more easily dictate where the fight goes, the opponent change did require a slight change in approach during training camp.

But according to his main trainer Ritchie Vadnais, the biggest challenge was the fact that this made the new matchup a southpaw vs. southpaw.

“(Two southpaws fighting each other) is a rarity in boxing and MMA. So you just have to make little adjustments,” Vadnais said. “There’s little footwork things. You don’t want to go into the power hand, you want to go away from the power hand.”

While Vadnais admits Filipovic is a very dangerous opponent, he believes he’s a little bit more predictable and thus an easier opponent for which to gameplan.

“Nogueira has more tools, I believe, than Cro Cop does. He’s a good boxer, he’s got good ground skills. Cro Cop’s a little one-dimensional. You know what’s coming from him -- it’s all the left side. That’s all you really have to worry about.

“He’s got a big left kick and left hand and big left uppercut as well. It’s a rarity when he uses his right hand. It’s usually just to set things up.”

Mir also addressed his recent comments about a possible move to light-heavyweight, saying they were made just in passing.

“I made the mistake of training with Forrest (Griffin) and I look in the mirror and he looks like the heavyweight and I don’t. He’s a very large individual,” Mir said. “Then certain people in my life said there’s no way in hell (I could ever make that move). And that’s fuel for the fire for me. If you say there’s something you don’t think I can do … all of sudden I was dieting and trying to get down.”

Despite the “challenge” put forth to him, Mir wasn’t going to have enough time to cut down to 205 pounds in time for when he wanted to fight again after his UFC 111 bout against Shane Carwin in March. So he took this fight at heavyweight. And that allowed him to come to his senses.

“I got my head straight again and I feel more comfortable at heavyweight at this weight, not cutting down from 280 but walking around between 250 and 255.”

Meaning that even though he hasn’t actually changed divisions, just the attempt at moving to the lower weight class will already prove to be of benefit.

To see just how much will have to wait to be seen on Saturday night.