Dana White sees the sky as the limit for combat sports prodigy Bella Mir.
This season of Dana White’s Contender Series features Mir – the daughter of UFC legend Frank Mir – vying for a UFC contract when she fights Alex Apodaca on Aug. 25. Mir already has a working relationship with the UFC, having signed on to be its first NIL ambassador in 2023 during her freshman year competing as a wrestler at the University of Iowa.
Should she impress against Apodaca, it’s possible the 23-year-old Mir could be signed to the UFC in 2026 and continue following in her father’s footsteps.
“I’m very excited about Bella,” White said speaking to the media after Tuesday’s DWCS show in Las Vegas. “I’ve been very involved in her life the last four years, so have fun.”
Frank was a prodigy in his own right, using his lethal submission skills run through the heavyweight division and capture a UFC title at the age of 25. A motorcycle accident later forced him to vacate the belt before he had a chance to defend it, but he remained a world title contender for a decade and captured an interim belt in 2008.
Bella has already begun filling her own trophy case, upsetting Reese Larramendy in the finals of the NCAA wrestling championships this past March to become a Division I wrestling champion at 145 pounds. That could be the first title of many for Mir, based on conversations she’s had with White.
“The Olympics. The UFC championship. Zuffa Boxing. And UFC BJJ,” White said. “She wants a title in all of those organizations. … We’ve talked about it. She presented that to me and I’ve been talking about her career with her for four years.
“I don’t want to talk too much about personal stuff, but I’m the one that really pushed her to go to college and get a college education because she was ready to start fighting right out of high school.”
A win on Aug. 25 doesn’t guarantee Mir will be signed, and even if she gets a contract it could be a developmental deal as opposed to an immediate call-up to the big show given her age and inexperience in MMA (so far, Mir is 4-0 as a pro fighter competing sporadically since 2022). Regardless, White thinks Mir is so laser-focused that success is all but guaranteed.
“That was the goal, too, in college, not just for her to get an education, but to break some college records,” White said. “This girl would go to school and she was wrestling, and then she’d go home on vacation, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and shit, and she would enter these jiu-jitsu competitions and win them while she was only wrestling, not only doing jiu-jitsu. So she’s special.”
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