(How many muppets must die for Jason Miller to dress in the manner to which he’s become accustomed? Pic: ESPN)
Truly spoken like a dude who’s used to being asked to leave. Some pretty classic quotes out on Tuesday from fighter, television host and all-purpose awesome dude Jason “Mayhem” Miller re: recent reports that Strikeforce literally couldn’t find him a fight during the last year of his contract because he’d become persona non grata at both Showtime and parent network CBS. Turns out, though he knew he was in hot water after his participation in the April, 2010 Nashville brawl, nobody at any of the above corporate entities bothered to inform Mayhem that he was no longer welcome on the two television stations and – therefore – damaged goods for Strikeforce. Instead, they just put him on the shelf to rot.
“I asked, and guess what? Nobody would tell me,” Miller told MMA Fighting. “This is a political environment. Nobody’s going to tell you. They’re just going to be cowards about it. That’s the way of the world. Nobody’s going to tell the crazy ultimate fighter guy to his face, ‘Hey, screw you.’ They’re not going to do that.”
This new information certainly casts the final year of Miller’s Strikeforce career in a new light. Now it makes more sense why the company seemingly didn’t know what to do with him, why none of the fights he requested ever materialized and why CEO Scott Coker always sounded so shifty when talking about Mayhem in interviews. From here we can extrapolate that the fight company was probably trying to find him a fight, but was ultimately unable to convince its business partners in TV.
Three things about that, though. One, pretty janky move for Strikeforce to just let him twist in the wind and not to come out and tell Miller they were dealing with unwavering hostility from the TV side. Two, well, fuck yeah he left for the UFC as soon as humanly possible. We would’ve done the exact same thing. And three, how in the blue hell does Jason Miller get banned from CBS when the parties clearly more egregiously at fault for the brawl – Nick Diaz, Gilbert Melendez and Jake Shields – were all allowed to go right back to work after their cosmetic suspensions in Tennessee lapsed?
“Up until the last minute – up until it was apparent that they had no intention of fulfilling the contract – I was like, hey, I’m ready to fight. Let’s fight,” Miller said. “At the last moment, it looks as if, okay, they can’t fulfill the contract. Now I fight in the UFC … I have no ill will towards anyone. If that’s how they saw it, then that’s how they saw it. If that’s the case that I was really banned (from Showtime), then hey, it’s not the first place I’ve been 86′d from.”
Long story short, Miller essentially wasted a year of his fighting career (turning 30 in December) waiting for the suits to figure their shit out. That sucks, especially for a guy who by his own admission ain’t getting rich doing this shit.
“Here I’ve been sitting on the bench,” Miller said. “I’ve been training. I’ve been working hard and improving, but do you guys think I get some sort of severance package? Do you think I have ‘Bully Beatdown’ billions? I don’t, trust me. I sat around and wasted a good chunk of my career that I could have been making income and capitalizing on the fact that my body is great and I know how to fight.”
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“And three, how in the blue hell does Jason Miller get banned from CBS when the parties clearly more egregiously at fault for the brawl – Nick Diaz, Gilbert Melendez and Jake Shields – were all allowed to go right back to work after their cosmetic suspensions in Tennessee lapsed?”
Because did you really expect Showtime to ban three sitting champions? Mayhem was a “nobody” to them, and someone had to be punished. It’s bullshit, but it makes sense.