Dana White’s Contender Series delivered one of its wildest nights in show history when Alex Apodaca, a +1200 underdog, stopped Frank Mir’s daughter Bella Mir to punch her ticket to the UFC. The judges’ scorecards should have been the end of the story.
Instead, they were only the beginning.
Before the arena had even cleared out, Bella’s mother, Jennifer Mir, took to social media to suggest her daughter had been on the wrong end of favorable judging and that Apodaca had simply caught a break.
The comments spread fast, and so did the response from fans, who were quick to push back on a UFC legend’s wife going after a rookie fresh off the best night of her career. Within days, Jennifer walked it back.
She described her post as the reaction of a mother watching her daughter absorb a hard loss, admitting the moment got the better of her. “However, that is ZERO excuse,” she wrote. “I want to sincerely apologize to Alex Apodaca, her team, the judges, and the fans.” She added that Apodaca had earned the win fair and square and deserved nothing but respect.
That probably could have been the end of it. Then Sean Strickland showed up.
The UFC star didn’t waste time getting into the family dynamics of the Mir corner. He first took aim at the idea of Bella being coached by her father, former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir.
“Your dad shouldn’t be your coach, your boyfriend shouldn’t be your coach, your husband shouldn’t be your coach,” Strickland wrote on X. “That should be the first rule of MMA.”
A fan followed up, half joking, asking whether Jennifer could step into that role instead now that the father-coach option was off the table. Strickland’s answer left no room for interpretation: “Women can’t be coaches.”
It read as a direct follow up to the criticism Jennifer had just apologized for, and it fit a pattern fans have come to expect from Strickland. He has built a reputation for dismissive takes on women’s involvement in combat sports.
In another post, he argued that his own harsh approach would make him effective with female athletes, writing, “I think I make a good woman’s coach because my hatred for their softness makes me push them harder.”
He has also previously weighed in on the controversial relationship between Aspen Ladd and her former coach and husband Jim West. Strickland previously sarcastically wrote that he was “pretty sure @TheAspenLadd is suffering from Stockholm syndrome.”
He later claimed West met Ladd when she was a teenager and said, “He married her. Actually he tried to talk to me once and I almost put hands on him and had to walk away.”
Strickland has similarly used his social media to attack other coaches, including Pat Barry, who coached former UFC star Rose Namajunas. In one post, Strickland wrote, “Clearly Pat berry is better at being a p*dophile than a MMA coach.”
His latest target before the Mir controversy was veteran coach and former UFC athlete Din Thomas. After Thomas took an aim at his athlete Gillian Robertson, Strickland fired back by calling him a “f**king c*nt” and dismissing his career, writing that Thomas should “probably better you retire ya s*it coach.” He added, “You only lose when you quit… Din sounds like you’re a f*cking loser.”
What makes the whole saga stranger is how little any of it seems to bother the woman at the center of it.
Apodaca has spent the past several years chasing an MMA career while working a full time job at an accounting firm, and beating an NCAA wrestling standout with a lifetime of training behind her is the kind of story that doesn’t need extra noise to be compelling. She’s chosen not to add any.
Asked directly about Jennifer’s comments, Apodaca brushed them off entirely. “Yeah… I didn’t even know that,” she told. “I had no idea. I think everyone else is making it more of a thing. It didn’t impact me or anything. I think people, they are gonna… they just wanna fixate on something, sometimes. So, I was like, I’m just not gonna do that.”
