LAS VEGAS — When I sat down to talk with Jim Miller a few days before his fight with Bobby Green at UFC 300, I really only had one question: How?
How does a person manage to be at a high enough level early on in his career that he gets the call to fight at UFC 100, but also manage to stay healthy, successful and relevant enough to also get the call for UFC 200 and UFC 300?
And it’s not just about the numbers attached to the events. That part is at least somewhat arbitrary. But almost 15 years have passed between UFC 100 and this Saturday’s UFC 300 event. That’s a lifetime in this sport.
And in the lightweight division, where Miller has spent almost all of his nearly 20-year career, it’s practically an eternity. Heavyweights might lumber into their forties based on some combination of natural power and overall scarcity. But the lighter weight classes? Those divisions are always brimming with hungry talent eager to knock off any aging veteran whose reflexes have slowed even the tiniest bit.
So, how did Miller stick around this long, from double-digit UFC events to the much anticipated and thoroughly stacked UFC 300?
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say there was a lot of luck involved,” Miller said with a wry chuckle. “The lifestyle that we fighters live, it’s dangerous. And I’ve been very fortunate.”
And, sure, that’s got to be part of it. Miller’s had 55 professional fights, which means 55 training camps, 55 weight cuts, 55 walks to a cage where, on any given night, several people are bound to leave in considerably worse shape than they went in. To do that for almost two full decades while never once fighting fewer than twice (and usually three or four times) per year, you have to get at least a little bit lucky.
You also have to be extremely good at this, not to mention smart. Miller attributes at least some of his longevity to the latter. Breaking off from his old gym and forming his own operation, where he could mostly run his own training camps? That was a big part of it, he said. So was learning to roll with the punches — both literally and figuratively.
Maybe one of the most amazing facts of Miller’s career is that he fought for several years with undiagnosed Lyme disease. It left him extremely fatigued, barely able to train, with a mind that seemed permanently wrapped in fog. This alone might have driven other fighters out of the sport, or at least sidelined them for a spell. Miller didn’t feel like he had either option.
“When things got bad and it got really difficult, I had a young family,” Miller said. “My youngest was born in 2015 and I have four kids. So it’s like, well, how am I going to support them? My gym was just coming up, it wasn’t going to pay the bills. And I wasn’t prepared to retire and do something else. I knew that there was still gas in the tank.”
Stubbornness was part of what pulled Miller through. But no one makes it this far, and at this level, without a profound ability to grow and learn and adapt. And if you really drill down into it, that might be Miller’s greatest gift. The people who stay static in this sport don’t last for long. Due to his changing health, a naturally changing body, and also a rapidly changing sport, Miller has had to become several different versions of himself to stay successful.
“When I got through the Lyme disease I had to ask myself, OK, how do I fight to the strengths that I have now — not the strengths I had when I was 26,” Miller said. “I’m still strong. I’m still quick in scrambles, but I couldn’t keep the same pace up. … There were fights early in my career where, on paper, maybe that guy should have beat me, but I just outworked him. Then you get to a point where the body just doesn’t work the same, unfortunately. That’s time, and you can’t change time.”
In some ways, maybe the adjustments Miller had to make then have aided his ongoing longevity now. He’s always been a person who likes to learn new things, he said, “and I like to suck at them at first, because I enjoy experiencing that progress.”
While Miller campaigned to be added to the UFC 300 fight card just so he could say he’d fought at all the centennial events so far, it’s also not like the UFC added him as some kind of charity case. At 40, and in arguably the most competitive division in MMA, Miller has still won five of his last six.
UFC 300 might be a moment of celebration and reflection for the UFC, but it’s also one for Miller. To walk out into a full arena at the biggest event of the year, that’s something that would have surprised the 21-year-old version of Miller who was sure that, best-case scenario, he’d never be able to fight past 35, he said.
“I’m sure it will really bring it into perspective,” said Miller. “A lot of people, I don’t know if they really understand what it means to be able to stick around in this sport for this long. But personally? I also still feel like there’s more work to be done, other fights to fight, and more opponents I’d like to be matched up with.”
And, who knows, UFC 400 might be here before we know it.
Source Agencies
