Blood in the Cage by L. Jon Wertheim

Author:L. Jon Wertheim [Wertheim, L. Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub

There’s an old boxing saying: Styles make fights. The same holds in the UFC. In the fall of 1998, after his winning debut in New Orleans, Miletich was invited to fight for the newly created UFC welterweight title. His designated opponent was Mikey Burnett, the oxlike wrestler from Oklahoma. Though the two could have hopped in their cars, driven a few hours, and met in, say, Kansas City, the fight was held in Sao Paolo.

UFC 17.5, titled “Ultimate Brazil,” was an attempt to both penetrate the South American market and hold an event without the usual pitched battle with a state athletic commission. While the card was generally successful,* it was no thanks to Miletich and Burnett. Their encounter was less a fight than a slow dance, two wrestlers hugging and clutching and failing to inflict anything resembling punishment for twenty-one excruciatingly boring minutes. Burnett’s superior strength was undermined by Miletich’s superior technique, which was undermined by Burnett’s superior strength. Before the stalemate ended, the fighters shot each other frustrated looks, acknowledging that this was one dog-ugly fight. Back in Bettendorf, Mona Miletich watched the fight from a bar, joined by her son’s new girlfriend, Lyne. For all their partisanship, even they could tell it was not exactly a classic.

Rewarded for his aggression, Miletich won a split decision from the judges, taking the belt. Although the win guaranteed him more UFC fights, Miletich got word—never to his face, always through intermediaries—that he’d be well advised to adopt a flashier fighting style. The message was clear: the UFC was an entertainment vehicle, and fighters who weren’t captivating fans weren’t pulling their weight.

Around three months later, Miletich was asked to defend his belt at UFC 18, a card held in New Orleans, one of the few jurisdictions where mixed martial arts met with little resistance from politicians. In addition to Miletich, the program featured Tito Ortiz, a brash, temperamental, reformed crystal-meth addict from Southern California. It also marked the UFC debut of the successful Pancrase heavyweight Bas Rutten. But the underlying theme of the card was the awkward absence of the heavyweight champion, Randy Couture.

The most decorated heavyweight in UFC history, Couture had stumbled onto MMA fighting by chance. Not unlike Miletich, he was a decent wrestler in high school, his aggression fueled by an unstable home life. In the early 1980s, Couture attended Washington State University with vague designs of walking onto the varsity wrestling team. But in his first semester, an old girlfriend called to say she was pregnant. Determined to avoid the same mistake his own absentee father had made, Couture dropped out of school, married the girl, and joined the Army, lured in part by the $5,000 signing bonus. As far as he was concerned, he had just retired from wrestling; if he was going to be pinning anything in the foreseeable future, it would be diapers.

Stationed in Germany, he took to wrestling and improved radically. He won a few military tournaments, was invited to the U.S. Olympic trials, and ended up making the 1988 team as a heavyweight alternate.

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