While Mitrione is eager to embrace the future, there's one item left from his past he's yet to let go: The protest of his controversial loss to Travis Browne in Boston on Jan. 17.
The bout, won by Browne via third-round TKO, changed on a pair of uncalled Browne eye pokes. Afterwards, Mitrione filed an official appeal of the result with Massachusetts State Athletic Commission, raising several concerns about the fight's referee, Gary Forman.
"How is it excusable that a dude that has reffed nine fights in six years gets a heavyweight fight on a major card on network television because he's friends with the commission?" Mitrione asked. "There's a laundry list of stuff that didn't go right there, that should have been stopped."
"How come he chose not to stop the fight when he witnessed the eyepoke, and he even told Travis 32 seconds later, ‘hey Travis, watch your fingers,' because I'm fighting with one eye closed?" Mitrione said.
Mitrione has also called Forman's professionalism into question, citing that he retweeted several articles written about Browne leading up to the fight, then directly tweeted Browne a few days after the fight, asking him how his leg was doing.
"Why was he tweeting before the fight?" Mitrione asked. "Why was he retweeting Travis' stuff? Why didn't he take points away? There are too many things there that are unacceptable that would never fly in the NFL or something else."
LINK: Matt Mitrione vows to take Travis Browne appeal to state Supreme Court if he must
