Former UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir had almost passed airport security in Brazil when he was waved back. Something was inside his luggage.

“I have a bunch of different gym bags, too many bags that I use, and my backpack, I guess, I hadn’t used it since I went shooting last,” Mir (16-9 MMA, 14-9 UFC) today told MMAjunkie Radio from Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where he meets Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva (18-6-1 MMA, 2-3-1 UFC) in Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 61 headliner.

Officers rescanned Mir’s backpack and tried to figure out what was wrong. Mir emptied its contents. At first, he didn’t find anything. But then, he pulled out one of two 9-mm bullets.

“I flew from (Las) Vegas to (Los Angeles); no one noticed it,” he said. “I flew from LA to Sao Paulo; no one noticed it.”

Mir doesn’t speak much Portuguese, and the officers didn’t speak much English, so it wasn’t exactly easy for him to explain the situation, which Globo first reported.

They asked him if he was a police officer. He said he was from Las Vegas and trained with firearms and made a simple mistake. Then they detained him.

“The first guy, he kind of panicked a little bit (and said), ‘I’ve got to call the police,'” Mir said. “He walked off. It kind of sucked because the manager of the area, she came over and we were explaining the whole situation, and she basically said, ‘Let’s forget this. It’s an understandable mistake.’ But then the other guy ran off with my passport. Firearms are illegal here in Brazil, so he stressed out a little bit.”

The more Mir waited, the more his concern grew about what might happen next. So he called for help from the guy he knew could help, and would probably find out anyway whatever happened: UFC President Dana White.

“They were being pretty casual with me, as far as I had access to my phone,” Mir said. “I was like, I’m not going to call the wife – what’s she going to do besides panic and freak out? I know where the buck’s eventually going to stop. Let me start out at the top of the food chain and let that sort it out. It will save me a bunch of phone calls.”

White told him to hang tight. After an hour of waiting, the police showed up.

“The gentleman came over, and he had a smile on his face,” Mir said. “He handed me my passport and let me know that I could have the passport and he was going to keep the bullets, and to try not to make that mistake again.”

There was just one more thing to worry about: the flight to Porto Alegre. With the delay, Mir had missed boarding. But there was more luck in store.

“My trainer, the boxing coach I was traveling here with, stopped the plane from taking off,” he said. “They knew who I was and they were holding off. “They knew who I was, and they were holding off.”

Mir called White again to give him the good news. Apparently, it wasn’t that easy a task to track down the officials that might have gotten Mir out of trouble.

“I guess we’re on the tail end of Carnival, so people aren’t answering their phones,” Mir chuckled.

And so, Mir is all set to face Silva at the Sunday event, which takes place at Gigantinho Gymnasium. The event’s main card airs live on FOX Sports 1 following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass.

If MMA weren’t so popular in Brazil, White might have been on the phone a lot longer trying to get Mir out of jail. But thankfully, the ex-champ has a little bit of pull.

For more on UFC Fight Night 61, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

MMAjunkie Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show, available on SiriusXM channel 92, is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.