UFC 146

UFC 146: dos Santos vs. Mir was a mixed martial arts (MMA) pay-per-view event (PPV) promoted by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on May 26, 2012 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The main card featured five MMA bouts which were shown on PPV, as well as seven preliminary bouts which were shown on FX, and Facebook. This was the first time in UFC history that the main card featured all heavyweight bouts. It was the twelfth UFC event of 2012.

The main event featured the UFC Heavyweight Champion, Junior dos Santos, defending his title against former two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion Frank Mir. The contest was heavily promoted, featuring the return of UFC Primetime to promote the UFC Heavyweight Championship. The co-main event of the evening was a battle between former heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, and newly acquired Strikeforce heavyweight, Antônio Silva, who made his UFC debut.

Background

Frank Mir was riding a three fight win streak leading up to this event, including a submission victory over Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira, a friend and mentor of Junior dos Santos, at UFC 140. Nogueira refused to tap to the kimura lock submission attempt, until it broke after his arm snapped under the pressure, then he tapped. Not only was Mir the first fighter to ever submit Nogueira, but he did so in devastating fashion. This was the first title defense for dos Santos since winning the belt by knocking out Cain Velasquez in November 2011 at UFC on Fox: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos.

Ultimate Fighting Championship

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a mixed martial arts promotion company. It is the largest in the world and features most of the top-ranked fighters in the sport. Based in the United States, the UFC produces events worldwide that showcase ten weight divisions and abide by the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. The UFC has held over 300 events to date. Dana White serves as the president of the UFC while brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta control the UFC's parent company, Zuffa, LLC.

The first Ultimate Fighting Championship event was held on November 12, 1993 at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. The purpose of the early Ultimate Fighting Championship competitions were to identify the most effective martial art in a fight, with minimal rules, between competitors of different fighting disciplines, including boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Sambo, wrestling, Muay Thai, karate, judo, and other styles. In subsequent competitions, fighters began adopting effective techniques from more than one discipline, which indirectly helped create an entirely separate style of fighting known as present-day mixed martial arts.

Santos (surname)

Santos, originally Portuguese or Spanish for Saints (singular Santo), is a common surname of Christian origin in Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries and the Philippines. Sometimes it can be the final part of a given name, generally preceded by the particle dos (mostly in Portugal and Galicia) or de los (mostly in Spain) (of the, meaning of the Saints, as in Miguel dos Santos, Michael of the Saints). There are also other Iberian grammatical forms that are De Santo, De Santos, Del Santo, Santi, Santis, Santiz, Senti, Sentis and others. It is a name associated with a great number of different people:

General

Frank Mir

Francisco Santos "Frank" Mir, III (born May 24, 1979) is an American mixed martial artist. A two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion, he currently holds the record for most fights, victories and submissions in UFC Heavyweight history, and is tied for 4th for most UFC victories overall. The only person to win a UFC bout by toe hold, Mir possesses the longest uninterrupted tenure of any fighter in UFC history. He is the first man to knock out and submit Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira. As of August 10, 2015, Mir is #10 in UFC's official Heavyweight rankings.

Background

Born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Mir began training and competing in American Kenpo at a school owned by his parents, earning his black belt as a teenager. Mir's father was a Cuban-born wrestler and played a major roll in convincing him to begin wrestling on the basis that it could help him avoid submissions. Mir joined the wrestling team at Bonanza High School during his junior year and lost his first nine matches. During his senior year (1998) he went 44–1 and won the state championship. Mir played fullback and defensive end on the school's football team that reached the Southern Zone semifinals in 1997, and also competed in track and field. His discus throw of 177 feet, 10 inches is still a Sunset Regional record.

Jason Miller (fighter)

Jason Nicholas Miller (born December 24, 1980) best known as Mayhem Miller is an American TV host and mixed martial arts middleweight fighter. Miller trains at Reign Training Center in Lake Forest, California and at Kings MMA in Huntington Beach, California. He has fought in the UFC, Strikeforce, WFA, WEC, and DREAM. He holds notable wins over Robbie Lawler, Tim Kennedy, Denis Kang and Kazushi Sakuraba.

Miller was the host of MTV's reality series Bully Beatdown .

Early life

Miller was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and he grew up in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Miller's father was an 82nd Airborne paratrooper in the United States Army. After Miller was expelled from high school for fighting, he and his family had to move 40 miles so that he could go to school into a new district. Miller knew he wanted to compete professionally, He earned his yellow belt in Taekwondo at age 11 and joined his new High school's wrestling team and would challenge the instructors of karate schools to spar. He was guided by a judo instructor to attend one of the first mixed martial arts schools. Miller had his first fight in Virginia Beach when he was 17 years old, against 27-year-old Al "Superman" Dill. Miller won the fight and officially began his MMA career.