When Frank Mir used to visualize a fight, he kept it pretty simple.

He used to picture generic stuff, regardless of who he was fighting -- a slipped jab, a single-leg takedown, an armbar. His visualizations almost always ended in an armbar.

As Mir (16-9) prepares to face Antonio Silva at Sunday's UFC Fight Night card in Porto Alegre, Brazil, he says the biggest thing that has changed over the course of his career is his ability to visualize. He sees the finer details now.

"Everything used to be very vague," Mir told ESPN.com. "Now, I've been in the Octagon so many times, I can see the crowd. I can see the referee. I see the opponent's face. I'm more in tune with all that."

Win or lose on Sunday, one thing Mir is not visualizing is a retirement party.

The 35-year-old former champion has lost four consecutive bouts dating back to May 2012. In those four fights, Mir has fought nine total rounds and failed to win a single one of them.

He admitted to contemplating retirement after his most recent loss, via unanimous decision to Alistair Overeem almost exactly one year ago. But since then, Mir says he has re-evaluated his career and assessed what he felt were the primary issues.

He's ready to fight for the foreseeable future, even if things go poorly this weekend.

"Even if, for whatever reason, I'm unsuccessful on Sunday and the UFC were to release me, unless I were to see some kind of way I could compensate my family, I would still fight," Mir said. "I would just have to find different organizations.

"I've been fighting UFC fighters. I've had no easy fights as of late. If I'm not successful on Sunday, I would never retire from fighting. But realistically, I might get cut from the UFC."

Of course, Mir, who fights out of Las Vegas, isn't planning on losing to Silva or parting ways wit the UFC, where he has competed since 2001.

He believes one of the key contributing factors to his recent rough patch is not listening to his own body.

Within one month after losing to Junior dos Santos via second-round knockout in 2012, the first loss in his four-fight skid, Mir says he had underwent elbow and shoulder to deal with pre-existing injuries.

He estimates he had six surgeries in a span of three or four years -- and yet that whole time, he says he continued to train with the same intensity he did early in his career.

He got on testosterone-replacement-therapy (TRT) in 2012, but was forced off the treatment last year when it was banned from combat sports in Nevada. This weekend will mark his first performance since weaning off TRT, but Mir says it won't be an issue.

He is confident he eliminated the problem that forced him to get on TRT to begin with -- overtraining.

"I was training way too hard," Mir said. "Now, Ive reached a higher level. I'm much more proficient, instead of the last few fights where I was going in so banged up and injured. There were a few times I didn't even train.

"I think when I fought Josh Barnett, for three weeks I didn't even train because I had a pinched nerve in my hip. I would just shadow box in Vegas."

Although Silva (18-6-1) is on a skid of his own -- winless in his last three appearances -- the Brazilian is a comfortable 3-to-1 favorite on Sunday. Not to mention eager to get himself back into the win column.

"Independent of where Frank is or how many losses he has, he's a great fighter with a great name," Silva said. "I'm going to fight him as seriously as I would fight any other big fight. Last year was a tough year but I've put it behind me."