Mayhem: ‘Cowards’ at Strikeforce wasted a good chunk of my career
When Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller got intlo the infamous Strikeforce brawl, he ended up under a dog pile, by himself (see…
When Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller got intlo the infamous Strikeforce brawl, he ended up under a dog pile, by himself (see video at bottom). Shortly after he offered a sincere apology. Ultimately five fighters inclduing Miller were fined and suspended for his role in the melee. When the other fighter’s suspensions were lifted, they went right back to work.
Not so with Mayhem.
UFC president Dana White recently explained that Mayhem had been “banished from CBS for life.” Since CBS also owns Showtime, Miller was unwelcome in any televised Strikeforce fight. And Miller said no one in Strikeforce or Showtime ever let him know.
“All I knew is that I sat on the bench for a year,” the Bully Beatdown host told MMA Fighting. “That’s all I knew.”
“I asked, and guess what? Nobody would tell me. 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.”
“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. 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.”
“Here I’ve been sitting on the bench. 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.”
“Maybe it was because I was the only guy who apologized and accepted the blame. I was the only guy who really apologized for it, and not this half-hearted thing where my manager’s making me say I’m sorry. I was truly apologetic. That whole incident, I never expected anything like that to happen.”