Carwin Vs Mir

UFC 111, Frank Mir steps into the cage full of confidence in his new-found striking and strength.  A few minutes later he lay face down unconscious. So did Carwin beat him, yes he did to some extent not wanting to take anything away from Shane Carwin but mostly Frank Mir was beaten by his confidence in his newly acquired striking and strength.  I really never bought into it, he defeated a flat Nog and was able to slip in 1 good solid punch on Cheick Kongo that allowed the submission.  Mir’s real problem started with the Nog fight, where he fell in love with his striking. The entire time he was up against the fence I was thinking let Carwin take you down, execute your black belt  ju-jitsu and get the submission but instead he chose to let Carwin press him on the fence with this look as if to say eventually we will seperate and I will knock him out with my new impressive striking. Mir learned the wrong lesson from his loss to Lesnar, strength isn’t the problem it’s the fact that he can’t wrestle his way out of those clinches that loses him these fights. No matter how much he tries to muscle up he won’t be able to get out of those positions against those guys with pure strength. Maybe some lessons with Couture would be good for Mir. So now the question is whats next for Mir, maybe Gonzaga or Nelson. All I know is that Mir needs to realize that these are NEW skills he has acquired and need not abandon what originally brought him to the top ten which was a heavyweight that could move and perform ju-jitsu on the ground like no other heavyweight could. Confidence is great but he needs to not only evaluate his losses but evaluate his wins against Nog and Kongo for what they truly were..