Trip to NCWWC semifinals caps off year of growth for Iowa’s Bella Mir

CEDAR RAPIDS — Bella Mir could have easily thrown down her second-round opponent with full ferocity onto the royal blue wrestling mat at NCWWC Nationals in Cedar Rapids.

But Mir didn’t.

“It’s funny because everyone’s like, ‘Bella, why didn’t you slam her,’” Iowa Coach Clarissa Chun said.

In the split-second moment where the Hawkeye 155-pound wrestler had Emory & Henry College’s Molly Keller “in the air,” Mir heard Chun say to instead slowly throw her to the floor.

"What I was hoping she was going to look for was the control on the way down to look for a pin,“ Chun said. ”If you slam them, you might let go of everything that you have.“

Mir’s quick learning moment at a critical time — her win over Keller advanced her to the quarterfinals, where she won again to clinch All-America status — has epitomized her first two years as a Hawkeye.

“You can teach her something or show her something, and she does it,” teammate Kylie Welker said. “She just does it instantly.”

It is to the extent that Chun compared Mir’s coachability to “playing a video game” because “you tell her what to do, she does it.”

Mir attributed it to her awareness and her “background of just constantly having someone coaching you” as the daughter of Frank Mir, the two-time UFC heavyweight champion.

“He has to have perfection in everything,” Mir said of her father. “He would literally put that into my brain that I had to listen to him my entire life. So it just feels normal to me.”

Her father’s pressure to “perfect my craft” started on “the day I was born,” Mir said.

“Even as a baby, he would put me on handlebars and see how long I can hold,” Mir said. “There’s crazy things that parents don’t really do, so I’ve just always been used to having that person pushing me in a good way.”

Quick learning leads to growth on, off wrestling mat

Mir has “grown so much” during her first two years at Iowa, Welker said this week at NCWWC Nationals.

“Coming into college, she was kind of her in her shell, on the wrestling mat and off,” Welker said.

Chun, likewise, saw an initial “shyness” from Mir when moving from Las Vegas to Iowa. But as she nears the end of her second collegiate season, Mir is clearly in her element.

“It’s been really cool to see her flourish,” Welker said.

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Welker — the former junior world champion and stalwart at 170 pounds — has especially seen 155-pound Mir’s growth on the wrestling mat after frequently being practice partners last year.

“From the beginning, I was beating her pretty bad,” Welker said. And then toward the end of the year, she was giving me a run for my money.”

This year, Mir’s “ties have been a lot more controlled than last year.”

“Last year, I just tried to bully people,” Mir said. “I’m way more technical than I was last year.”

Between injury issues earlier in the year and the presence of reigning collegiate national champion Marlynne Deede, Mir has not necessarily had a starring role on the 2023-24 Hawkeyes.

But when she has competed, the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

Mir finished first in the Soldier Salute, with the championship win coming against Latifah McBryde — the second-ranked NAIA wrestler in her weight class. She also won dual matches against Adrian College, Missouri Valley, Campbellsville and Indiana Tech.

Until Saturday’s semifinals, Mir’s lone loss was to Deede — her star teammate — in the championship round of the NCWWC Regionals. Even then, it was only an 8-4 decision.

“It was a good match,” Chun said.

If a Deede-Mir matchup happened again, Chun believes “any one of them could come out on top.”

Mir’s first loss on Saturday was to King University’s Cheyenne Bowman — a particularly unfavorable matchup for the relatively small Mir. She then lost again before winning her placement match to finish fifth in her weight class.

Mir’s growth comes at a good time for the Hawkeyes. With Deede exhausting her eligibility after this year, Mir is well positioned to step up into the top 155 spot.

Her growing process does not seem to be over any time soon either.

“She continues to grow and be curious and learn about not just wrestling, but about life,” Chun said. “It’s just fun to work with.”

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