Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller lived up to his fight name this weekend. He was scheduled to fight Luke Barnatt in Milan, Italy for the Venator middleweight championship. It is customary in mixed martial arts to allow a one pound allowance, but not for title fights.
Thus Miller had to make 185.
He weighed in at 209. That’s 24 pounds over. In a title fight.
The controversial fighter stripped off his fight shorts, just to make sure. The promoter was standing by with a towel, just in case he had to strip naked to make sure his underwear didn’t weigh over 10 kilos.
Barnatt will instead fight Stefan Croituru for the title.
After he accepted the fight, Barnatt wanted to thank his opponent for taking the fight, tweeted John Morgan for MMAjunkie. Only problem, he didn’t even know what he looks like.
Croituru had been scheduled to fight Mattia Schiavolin. There is also word thatSchiavolin wants to fight Miller, regardless of the weight difference.
Miller has been in the news for years for odd, sometimes alarming brushes with the law. There are endless psychiatric diagnoses offered by Internet experts in typing, and speculation about what recreational he drug is on.
However, while Mayhem is a genuine eccentric, he is much, much more than that. For example, this year he has been working on a charity endeavor.
The one major thing that I’m really trying to get off the ground is Mayhem Videodome,” said Miller to Jeremy Brand for MMA Sucka in March. “It’s a charity for kids with cancer. We go there, furnish them with Xbox, Playstation 4 and just try to get them high energy happiness for children struggling with leukemia and these childhood cancers. That’s like kind of my focus for these past few months is trying to get that one up and running so that we can make Mayhem Miller Industries a leader in not only mixed martial arts, but also charitable contributions.
Miller is absolutely insistent that he is not what he was made out to be during an appearance on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
It wasn’t even Bryant Gumbel, it was a bootleg impostor of Bryant Gumbel,” said Miller. “Eight, nine, ten hours… It was like an interrogation and he never got the answers he wanted, so instead they just edited me funny.
They tried to portray me as some monster. The truth is they were barking up the wrong tree for that one. It was ridiculous, trying to compare me to damn War Machine or some ridiculousness. It’s like what the f*** — you see what that guy did to her, I used to beat that kid up every single day.
I’m a sensitive flower underneath this gruff exterior. I do a lot of positive things and I’m just shocked that everyone wants to take a chunk out of you. When you’re famous, everyone just wants to take a bite out of you whenever they can because it furthers their agenda and I’ve learned that the hard way over the last three years. I’ve really figured it out that when you’re on top, you’re flying high, it’s really hard for them to bite you. But when you have a bad run, everyone out there is just trying to take a chunk and cook it up.
I never said that I was a librarian. I never said that I was a priest or the greatest Samaritan, but man I do my part and it’s being overlooked. And that’s OK with me, that’s fine. I’m not supposed to be any of those things that I mentioned. I’m supposed to be a dude that punched, kicked and chokes people. And that’s what I’m gonna do, that’s my job, I’m really good at it and that’s the main thing that people have forgotten — is that I’m really good at fighting.
The reason I’ve been arrested so many times is because of the media. Everybody likes to point a finger and say Mayhem’s the bad guy. I ain’t no bad guy, but I didn’t do anything to stop everyone from thinking that. That’s where I’m changing things up. Nowadays I’m just going to talk to people and let everyone decide if I’m really a bad guy. I know who I am and I know the just blatant lies that have been in the media this entire time. I made a big mistake, I got mad at the media and said alright, they’re gonna lie about me, so go f*** yourself then and I didn’t talk to anyone. So now there’s only one side of the story out there. Now I’m gonna be talking to you guys all the time.
I’m not too good with public relations. I haven’t been and that’s mostly because I didn’t feel like talking to the media at all. I got a bad shake from ’em and now suddenly I just realized that, alright, fine, instead of not talking to the media I’m gonna get out in front and talk to you guys and make sure that the true story gets out there. It’ll take some time to repair all this mud slinging that’s been done, but I’m very confident in the future.
