‘Mayhem’ adds spice to middleweight ranks
Miller's wild style, statements draw following of 'mayhem monkeys'
Jason “Mayhem” Miller rolls into Sin City with his boisterous fans and a penchant for igniting firefights like some kind of mixed martial arts arsonist.
Miller and his “mayhem monkeys” greet Japan’s Hiromitsu Miura (6-3) in a middleweight contest at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on Saturday. The fight card is sponsored by World Extreme Cagefighting.
Everywhere Miller travels, his loyal mayhem monkeys join him like a modern-day Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters during the 1960s. They love his wild-at-all-costs attitude.
“I’d rather lose in a good action fight than win in a boring one,” Miller, 26, said. “My fans expect it too.”
Since childhood, the former Army brat (both his father and mother were in the military) has found that his calling always has been trading bloody noses with other rowdy and restless individuals.
“My father used to watch me fight and would be laughing,” said Miller (26-5). “He raised me on rock salt and punches in the face.”
His introduction to mixed martial arts came as a 16-year-old in Fayetteville, N.C., when he was challenged to a fight by his close friend, who had been taking jujitsu classes.
“He was smaller than me and kind of a nerd. ... I laughed at him because I had been in tons of fights on the streets,” Miller said. “He kicked me in the stomach and choked me out with a triangle hold. I was very excited about it.”
MMA became part of his world for good.
Because Miller’s father was in the 82nd Airborne Division, the family soon headed to Hawaii. It was on the island paradise where he first heard the term “haole boy.” And when he finally discovered what it meant, he laughed and laughed.
“It was hilarious,” Miller says about the word haole, which means foreigner or white person in Hawaiian. “I decided to put that on my web site.”
A visit to his Myspace.com site shows a masked face with the term “Haole boy can scrap” on the cover page. He has more than 61,000 hits on his page and a long blogging site, where his minions ask about his personal life, fight schedule and how to become a mayhem monkey.
Miller answers as only he can: with wit and reckless abandon.
“I’ve always been this way,” he quips.
During the last year, Miller has made Murrieta’s Team Quest his training base, where he trains extensively with MMA experts such as Pride welterweight and middleweight champion Dan Henderson.
“Dan Henderson is the man,” Miller says. “They have everything I need there.”
Every week while preparing for an upcoming fight, Miller jumps in a car and drives from his Hollywood home to Murrieta, Calif. — a distance of 100 miles. He stays during the week, then drives home for the weekend.
He’s just a jumpy kind of guy.
But Miller has benefited from working with a team.
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Parsons has known Miller for five years and has witnessed the surge in popularity for the MMA fighter.
“Jason is a colorful personality and not afraid to say what he thinks,” Parsons says. “In Hawaii he’s a superstar.”
Whether it’s his wild style in the cage or his frank personality, he has drawn more and more mayhem maniacs.
“They’re outrageous,” says WEC public relations specialist Loren Mack.
Inside the cage Miller expects a different greeting from Miura.
“I know this guy is going to fight hard,” Miller says. “I plan on demolishing this guy.”
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