Mayhem Miller’s Nouveau Pro Wrestling
Your phone might say that Jason "Mayhem" Miller is calling, but it's not him on the other end when you answer. Instead, it's the familiar strains of a 1962 jam by Booker T and the MGs, and only after playing the song into the phone for about a minute does Miller begin to talk.
"It's called ‘Green Onions,'" Miller says. "Dude, it's a kick-ass song. Who gives a f--- what it's called?"
It almost makes sense that Miller would start an interview this way. He wants to keep everyone guessing all the time, mostly because it makes him laugh, and because it gets him attention.
"If you're not bright enough to get my humor, then it's your fault," says Miller, who at 27 is already a decade-plus veteran of mixed martial arts. "I think it's hilarious when people hate me or people don't get what I'm doing or don't get what I'm saying. That, to me, is even more satisfying than the people who get it."
When people in the MMA business talk about an "entertaining fight," they're probably talking about a high-energy bout with lots of ups and downs between two evenly matched athletes. Miller can fit that bill just as well as anybody, but he takes the entertainment part a whole lot further.
He'll flash thumbs up and a wide smile when in a precarious position. He'll sport a hockey mask and grip a sword on his way to the cage. He'll flail his arms like a monkey in postfight celebration (he calls his fans "Mayhem Monkeys").
Miller fights with the audience in mind first, his opponent second and has a gonzo approach to MMA.
"I'd rather not win than be boring," Miller says. "I think the promoters respect that. On top of that, I have no fear whatsoever of getting into the ring, no nervousness. So it allows me to act a fool during a press conference, act a fool when I'm cutting weight. I don't care. I think at the very least I'm entertaining, regardless of whether you like me or not."
What do you make of this if you're Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza, Miller's decorated opponent this Sunday in Saitama, Japan, as part of the quarterfinal round of Dream's middleweight tournament? Is it easier or harder to beat a fighter whom you know has little regard for whether he wins or loses? Does it make sense that a fighter with Miller's lack of caution has tested or beaten so many dead-serious, world-class fighters, including Denis Kang (Pictures), Robbie Lawler (Pictures) and Georges St. Pierre (Pictures)?
These are questions Miller's opponents likely can't answer until they're in the ring with him and attempting to discern order from the chaos he brings to the table. One thing's for sure: Miller shows no signs of fearing the world-class submission skills of "Jacare," who is 8-1 in MMA.
"This kid is overhyped, you know what I mean?" Miller says. "He fought a bunch of chumps, and now he thinks he's awesome. So that's cool. Whatever. But I've fought the toughest names in the business and beat many of them. … Am I expecting an easy fight? No. But at the same time, I love the fact that [people] think I'm going to get murdered because he's got a bunch of f---ing Internet Web clips of him submitting dudes. … Most ground guys, they get scared and just hold on to the guy and try to slow the fight down. I'm trying to speed it up. If I'm in a great position and I'm not finishing a guy, I will take myself into a worse position just so I can try to finish. I don't care. If he gets out, I'll deal with it. I don't want to put the crowd to sleep."
Miller's outlook almost seems custom-fit for the Japanese MMA marketplace, where the sport largely grew out of a generation of professional wrestlers in groups like Pancrase testing each other in real fights.
His proclivity for ground fighting -- most of his wins have come by submission -- also fits the Japanese fight mentality, and his sense of showmanship is up there with ring entrance mavens like Genki Sudo (Pictures) and Akihiro Gono (Pictures).
In his run with Dream, which started with a TKO win in May over pro wrestler Katsuyori Shibata (Pictures), Miller is finally in a context where his antics don't relegate him to the fringe. He talks like, acts like and calls himself a pro wrestler, and that's not frowned upon in the Orient.
"My fighting style is pro wrestling. It's just new pro wrestling," Miller says. "I think I'm just going to call it ‘nouveau' pro wrestling. Am I trying to win? Hell yeah. Is it scripted? Hell no. But most everything I do is with the entertainment value in mind."
Miller, who grew up a Hulkamaniac as a child of the 80s, has picked up many cues from pro wrestling. He says his hometown is "Parts Unknown," because his father was in the Army and moved his family from place to place (Miller has listed Atlanta as his hometown when "Parts Unknown" hasn't passed muster).
Miller lets a few references slip to certain places. He says he was fired as a teenager from a Subway in a Minnesota mall for picking skateboarding-induced scabs while on the clock, and that he began fighting in Virginia around 1998, years before Internet fight databases list his first fight, an April 2001 TKO over Tommy Laguwans at Rage in the Cage 27.
"I never even fought in Rage in the Cage," Miller says. "That's not even me, man. I didn't even fight that fight. As it stands, I have 34 wins, five losses, zero draws. That's my real record. I've been fighting since the Virginia Full Contact in 1999 or 1998. I was 17 years old. I've been fighting since Heavy D was skinny."
The fight world got its first real taste of Miller on the Hawaii circuit in 2003. The Super Brawl promotion, known today as Icon Sport, was enjoying a business boom by promoting fights featuring tenured island natives Egan and Enson Inoue. After Egan lost a title belt to Masanori Suda (Pictures), matchmaker T. Jay Thompson began looking for someone to come in to rehab his top act. He felt Miller, who had showed heart but no outstanding skill in prior fights, fit the bill.
"I brought him out as a tune-up fight for Egan," Thompson says. "In the beginning I told him what his job was: He was coming in to lose. He said he was going to put a cog in the wheel, and he did."
Miller brought the fight that December night in 2003, forcing Inoue's corner to throw in the towel after two rounds and shaming Inoue to the sidelines of the sport for five years. A grinning Miller incited the locals by rubbing the win in their faces. He was entirely in his element, and Thompson saw something he could work with.
"There was no one more hated than Jason Miller after he beat Egan Inoue (Pictures)," Thompson says. "I really decided to put a push on him and I saw that I could do a real antihero, a real bad guy."
Miller was soon billed on the island as "the most hated ‘haole' since Captain Cook," a tag that combined a derogatory term for white people with the name of a British Royal Navy officer who had brought war and disease to Hawaii when he became the first European to reach the islands in the 1700s.
The hype was so over-the-top that good-humored fans began taking to Miller and cheering him. That was cool, but not as cool as being hated, Miller says.
"I liked being booed and I thought it was hilarious," he says. "I felt like maybe 30 percent of the people got the joke that I was doing. And then slowly, as I kept winning fights, then more and more people got that I was just joking the entire time."
Today, the Hollywood resident trains with Dan Henderson (Pictures)'s Team Quest camp in Temecula, Calif., where he's been sharpening his jiu-jitsu and submission avoidance to prepare for "Jacare." He says his regular ground training partner Vinicius "Vinny" Magalhaes recently left camp to be on the next cast of "The Ultimate Fighter," so he's been branching out and working with other jiu-jitsu specialists.
"I've had a lot of unpronounceable Brazilians on top of me for this one," Miller says. "I put myself in bad positions against these top jiu-jitsu guys. I forgot a lot of s--- that I used to do in jiu-jitsu to avoid submissions and a lot of s--- that I would do to beat jiu-jitsu guys."
It's questionable whether Miller will be able to remember enough to beat "Jacare," one of the best competition jiu-jitsu players on the planet. But several things from Miller's past bode well for him. He still remembers taking a beating from Georges St. Pierre (Pictures) in his lone UFC appearance and then watching St. Pierre get briskly armbarred in competition grappling shortly thereafter. He remembers being brought in as a tune-up fight for Egan Inoue (Pictures) and ending up with his hand raised.
"I think this is another fight that he's being brought in as a tune-up," Thompson says. "On paper, I don't see how he wins this fight. But I'm not going to bet against him. I've learned my lesson."
No matter what, Miller will fight his heart out and entertain at the same time. He's known no other way since he started fighting on the streets as a kid.
"It was cool enough for me to headlock throw a kid on the concrete when I was 14," Miller says. "But if I headlock throw him and did a thumbs up and laughed to my friends, then that became the stuff of legend."
