Todd Duffee: Frank Mir isn't fighting the 23-year-old kid who trained with him

It took Todd Duffee more than a few interviews and Twitter messages before Frank Mir finally started paying attention to his attempts to score a fight with the former heavyweight champion.

When it started, Duffee saw Mir as the only fighter available in the top 15 rankings coming off a win, and so he thought the matchup made a lot of sense. At the time Mir was targeting a potential trilogy fight with Brock Lesnar when he was rumored to return to the UFC so Duffee's calls fell on deaf ears.

So Duffee turned up the heat.

Things got a little more personal and eventually Mir did pay attention, and the two heavyweights were matched up in a main event fight for the UFC Fight Night card taking place this Wednesday in San Diego. Since the matchup was made, Mir has decided to fire back by saying that Duffee isn't a draw and if ticket sales are low for the event, he's the reason why.

Once he scored the fight he wanted, Duffee's attacks nearly expired so he's not surprised at all that Mir opted to go on the attack after what precipitated the bout several months back.

"It's a way of selling the fight," Duffee told FOX Sports.  "Everybody knows I'm an exciting fighter. Everybody wants to see me fight. You don't spend two years away from the sport and people still talk about you if you're not an exciting fighter. I just look at that as him trying to sell the fight."

For all the ill will that built up after the call outs and verbal jabs exchanged, Duffee actually has a lot of good things to say about Mir. He's a fighter worth looking up to, especially when considering the kind of accolades he's already racked up in his career. Mir went through a rough patch where he lost several fights in a row and even contemplated retirement, but Duffee believes the guy he's fighting on Wednesday night is just as lethal has ever before.

"He's Frank Mir -- he's going to be in the hall of fame, there's no question," Duffee said. "He's held the title twice, he's had some spectacular wins but he's aged as a fighter some and I guess that's what everyone talks about. I don't think that's a factor for heavyweights. I think he's the same as he always was."

Duffee's familiarity with Mir goes beyond his admiration for the former heavyweight champion. The two fighters actually trained together while Duffee was living in Las Vegas and working out of the same gym.

Duffee hasn't addressed their shared training too often because he's not sure it's even relevant. After all, Duffee was a much younger, much greener and much different fighter than he is today.

"I think we grappled a few times early on when he first met me, had no idea who I was, and in all his interviews he had nothing but good things to say about me. I was a 23-year-old kid, I had been training for about three and a half years," Duffee said. "We were in the same gyms, we used some of the same training partners."

At that time, Duffee was one of the most highly-touted prospects in the heavyweight division, but a fallout with UFC president Dana White cost him his job and he was forced to look for work elsewhere. Cooler heads eventually prevailed and a more mature Duffee returned to the UFC in 2012.

But just when it looked like he was finally ready to live up to his own potential, Duffee was stricken with Parsonage-Turner syndrome, a brachial neuritis that causes inflammation and severe pain throughout the shoulder and arm pain. The disease set Duffee back so far he wasn't even sure he'd be able to return again.

Thankfully, Duffee fought back to good health and it was just further proof that he needed to make the most out of his years left in fighting, which is why he wanted to face Mir now to prove he could play with the big boys in the elite part of the UFC heavyweight division.

"I was very talented when I was 23, there's no question. You can't argue that. But I didn't have a good camp, I didn't have a good support system like I do now, I didn't have the experiences that I do now. I'm just a different guy," Duffee said.

"Having it taken away from you and I was looking at myself as a retired fighter for about a year. Like this is it, my career is over. Having that perspective on it has made me grow leaps and bounds. I definitely think this is my time. It's my time to show the work that I've been doing for the last eight or nine years."

As far as Mir's comments about their past training sessions or getting knocked out in two past fights, Duffee just plays it off to the veteran heavyweight looking at a much younger, much different fighter than the one he's about to face on Wednesday night.

A fighter that's looking to take his head off and if Mir expects anything less, he's in for a rude welcome to the Octagon.

"He's counting on me to be 23-year old Todd Duffee -- I'm not. I'm a grown man," Duffee said. "I'm a much different, more experienced guy. I think that could be a mistake on his part."