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Frank Mir says he will beat Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira at UFC 92 by following a simple game-plan - kicking his ass.

Mir and Nogueira will battle for the interim heavyweight championship on December 27, with the winner going on to meet Brock Lesnar for the undisputed belt early in 2009.

Former PRIDE Heavyweight Champ Nogueira is renowned as a fighter who somehow pulls victories out of the bag after being on the receiving end of heavy beatings.

The big Brazilian won the interim belt from Tim Sylvia at UFC 81 after being battered for two-and-a-half rounds before somehow managing to secure a guillotine and get the win - his seventh in eight fights against some top-class opposition.

And Mir says all he has to do is follow the same path as Sylvia - without getting caught himself.

"The other day someone in the gym was talking about so-and-so' kicking Nogueira's ass before he got caught," Mir told a Yahoo! Sports preview video.

"Someone else in the gym rightly shouted out: 'But everyone kicks Nogueira's ass at first and then gets caught!'

"He is like a zombie; he is like Frankenstein. Every time you kill him and think he is dead, he rises again. You can't put him out.

"He is not going to have a bad fight. That's what his experience has afforded him: the ability to go ahead and pull off wins no matter what.

"I just have to do what everyone else does; kick his ass for the first five, ten minutes. But I am just going to elongate that and not let him come back by not blowing out my steam. I have to continually beat him."

Mir and Nogueira are acknowledged as two of the best submission artists in the sport, certainly in the heavyweight division, and their fight promises to come to life when they hit the mat.

"This is a very interesting fight because for a long time I have been known as the submission guy for the UFC, while Nogueira was known as the submission guy of PRIDE.

"Now he is the UFC interim champ and it poses an interesting battle. It makes people question: What is going to happen when we hit the ground?"

Despite Nogueira's credentials as a Brazilian jiu-jitsu and judo black belt, Mir is confident that he can get the upper-hand in the ground game.

"Roberto Traven (Mir's opponent on his UFC debut in 2001) was a four-time world champion, more decorated at jiu-jitsu than Nogueira ever was, and I broke his arm in a minute."

Mir even found a way to spin a long-standing concern about a perceived lack of cardio fitness into a positive.

"If it is a two-minute fight, then no problem: I am going to win," the 29-year-old Las Vegas resident added. "I am faster, stronger and healthier.

"He thinks it is an advantage that it is a 25-minute fight because it could be a long fight. But I am thinking the same thing as he is thinking. I think it is an advantage (for me) because it is only going to last 25 minutes.

"Eventually the time will run out and I will get my hand raised."

Alex Sharratt / Eurosport