‘Mayhem’ goes mainstream with Strikeforce

Even though Jason “Mayhem” Miller’s life for the past 11 years has been based around fighting, he’s best known as the crazy host with the over-the-top facial expressions on the MTV pseudo-reality show “Bully Beatdown.”

Miller is banking on the idea that on Saturday night, he’ll become known past the MTV crowd with another tag: Strikeforce middleweight champion.

The 28-year-old, who has lived a nomadic existence since discovering fighting at the age of 17, faces Jake Shields on CBS in the first major network live MMA broadcast in 13 months. Miller vs. Shields will be the semi-main event underneath the much more hyped Fedor Emelianenko-Brett Rogers heavyweight battle that Strikeforce and CBS are counting on to draw a network prime-time level audience.

“I’m really pumped that Strikeforce is doing a great show on free television,” he said. “There are big names. That is what the sport needs, competition for the UFC.”

The card, which takes place at the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates, Ill., just outside of Chicago, can be argued is the most important MMA event of the year in terms of the sport’s future. Emelianenko may be the best heavyweight in the game, and is arguably is the best in MMA history. But he has yet to prove his in-ring talents translate into business numbers.

If the show doesn’t do well in the ratings, and CBS isn’t in it for the long haul, Strikeforce’s future plans will become tempered. If the show does well, it is a sign that a promotion other than the UFC can put big-time numbers on the board, and can do so without a Kimbo Slice-type freak-show attraction.

Miller, who fought once in the UFC, losing on a decision to Georges St. Pierre in 2005 – before the sport exploded in popularity – doesn’t see himself as a good fit for that organization. He’s been a part of network television extravaganzas in Japan the past two years. But since the boom of MMA in North America, this will be his first fight before a large U.S. television audience.

“I’m the heavy underdog but I don’t see it that way, but I’m happy to be in that position,” said Miller (22-6, 1 no-contest), where the line is coming in at just under 3-to-1 against him. “I think my submissions and wrestling can match up to him and my kickboxing is definitely a significant advantage that I have.”

Shields (23-4-1) is a former San Francisco State University wrestler, who now trains under Caesar Gracie along with his roommate, Gilbert Melendez and Nick and Nate Diaz. Shields may be the best former college wrestler in the sport at adapting to jiu-jitsu. He’s won a number of jiu-jitsu tournaments and placed third in the Abu Dhabi world submission championships in 2005. And Shields has markedly improved his ground game since that time.

On the ground, Shields is deadly. On the feet, though, he’s human. But as simple as it sounds to just keep Shields standing, he’s working on a 12-fight winning streak, dating back nearly five years, and was the welterweight champion of the Elite XC promotion. Shields beat Nick Thompson and Paul Daley by submission on CBS shows last year. He has been generally considered the best welterweight in the world not in the UFC for the past two years.

In Shields’ most recent match, he moved up to middleweight, facing the Elite XC champion in that class, Robbie Lawler. Lawler, with a good takedown defense and being bigger and a good slugger was thought to have the style match-up to beat Shields, but Lawler was ended up submitting to a guillotine in only 2:02.

“I train all the time with black belts,” said Miller. “He’s not going to show me anything I haven’t seen before.”

Miller hope to bring with him a fan base from his Thursday-night MTV show with an MMA theme that just ended its second season in late October. The show did about 800,000 viewers for the original prime-time showing, and with multiple repeats during the week, the overall viewership was significantly higher, mostly with teenagers and adults in their 20s, a key demographic CBS hopes MMA will bring to its network on Saturday.

MTV was auditioning prospective hosts two years ago for a show where MMA fighters would garner revenge by beating up bullies, when the producers were directed by YouTube videos of Miller. They were so impressed with what they saw that he was offered the job as host without even an audition.

But Miller remained a fighter, most recently in Japan for the Dream organization where he’s actually better known for his heavily choreographed ring entrances than his fights. Like flamboyant Japanese fighters Genki Sudo and Akihiro Gono, Miller comes out putting on a show, looking like something more you would expect from a Broadway musical than a fight event, but that type of pageantry is popular on Japanese events.

Strikeforce is going to allow him to do his trademark entrance, a new version which he won’t give away ahead of time. His entrances often involve dancing with people in monkey costumes, as Miller nicknames his fan base the “Mayhem monkeys.”

In a fight last year in Japan that he lost via decision to submission expert Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza via decision, he came out wearing a Hannibal Lechter mask, throwing fake money into the crowd. When Souza got him in a heel hook, Miller smiled at the crowd, gave a thumb’s up, and then escaped from the move.

The match was competitive enough that when Dream went to fill its middleweight title after Gegard Mousasi (the current Strikeforce light heavyweight champ, who faces Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou on Saturday night) vacated the title, Miller and Souza were chosen to fill the vacancy on May 26 in Yokohama, Japan. It ended in a no contest when Miller accidentally kicked Souza in the forehead while Souza was down, cutting him badly, to the point the fight was stopped.

Most likely, win or lose, Miller’s entrance will be one of the most talked about aspects of the show, and will have people either loving it for its creativity or hating it for making the event seem less like a pure sports contest.

Miller said he knew the sport would get this big back in 1998 when he started buying tapes.

“I remember waiting 20 minutes to download seven-minute fights and going on Internet web sites to find out the news,” he said.

He was originally from Fayetteville, N.C., and moved to Atlanta to chase his dream. He said after he tapped Tito Ortiz in a training session, that Ortiz wanted him to move to Huntington Beach, Calif. and train with him. He spent a year living in his van outside of the training center.

Since that time, he moved to Las Vegas, then spent a few years in Hawaii working for Icon Sports as middleweight champion when the sport was drawing big crowds regularly in Honolulu. He became a star when he defeated local legend Egan Inoue in 2003. In 2006, he beat Lawler to win the Icon Sports middleweight title with an arm triangle in the third round. He lost the title lost in a brutal match to current UFC fighter Frank Trigg.

In 2006, he did a freak show fight in Honolulu, where he faced a 6-foot-7, 350-pound Stefan Gamlin in a size vs. skill encounter, tapping the giant out in 46 seconds with an arm triangle. After the boom of regular major live events in Honolulu died down a couple years ago, he moved to Orange County, where he’s now based.