PHOTO | Frank Mir to make pro wrestling debut on WrestleMania weekend

Former UFC heavyweight champ and current Bellator MMA star Frank Mir is venturing into the world of pro wrestling — and he’s doing so as part of an organization helmed by another heavyweight MMA legend in Josh Barnett.

The event goes down on April 4, a few days before WrestleMania. Barnett announced this exciting news on Twitter earlier this week.

https://twitter.com/JoshLBarnett/status/1083793981484367872

Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport had it’s first show last April. This debut event featured plenty of other recognizable names, such as UFC veterans Matt Riddle, Tom Lawlor and Dan Severn.

From the sounds of it, Bloodsport is a little different from other mainstream organizations, which makes it a pretty interesting setting for the pro wrestling debut of Frank Mir.

Here’s how WON’s Dave Meltzer explained the pro wrestling organization in an article for MMA Fighting:

“Bloodsport is a staged but very stiff and more realistic-looking version of pro wrestling, held on elevated mats but with no ropes, based on the fighting surface in the 1988 martial arts movie “Bloodsport.” The style itself was somewhat based on the old UWFI pro wrestling promotion that was popular in Japan in the early 90s, which Barnett was a huge fan of growing up. The style is based on hard strikes and submissions, and without playing to the crowd or using moves that don’t work in a real fight, like most versions of pro wrestling.

It’s more of a dramatic form of simulated fighting than the audience-participation art form of pro wrestling.”

Mir last fought in December, when he was stopped by Javy Ayala in the Bellator cage. This loss was Mir’s fourth in a row, as he was also previously stopped by Fedor Emelianenko, and Mark Hunt, and defeated by Andrei Arlovski by decision.

How do you think Frank Mir will fair as a pro wrestler?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 1/13/2019.