Deserved
The man to fans as âA-10â is fast approaching his 41st birthday. Few expected, including Jim Miller himself, for the lightweight to still be fighting today. Given that his professional debut took place in 2005, itâs a miracle that heâs still active. However, Miller is doing more than just fighting in pointless contests.
To enter UFC 300, Jim Miller has won five of his last six appearances in the cage. The fight with âKingâ will be his first crack at a top-15 fighter in years. Speaking with Brendan Fitzgerald in an interview recently uploaded to the UFC Fight Pass YouTube channel, Miller reflected on his lengthy career to date.
There, the longtime lightweight contender admitted that he wouldnât do anything differently. Given the appreciation he gets from fans and his peers, Jim Miller feels that heâs handled his career the right way. To still be fighting in 2024 given his fight with Lyme disease is nothing short of awe-inspiring, and heâs aware of that.
âI appreciate that [fighter admire me]. I think if everyone really thought it, thatâs what they really want. Respect from your peers right?â Jim Miller stated on a recent edition of the Fitz Chats Podcast. âLike if youâre a brain surgeon, you want other brain surgeons to think youâre good. Not just âJoe Schmoâ. To have that respect from my peers [is incredible]⊠Itâs awesome.â
He continued, âItâs awesome to have left a mark on the sport thus far. Hopefully, the mark that I leave is bigger, but I know that itâs been the right way. I know that itâs for the right reasons. That makes me proud and that makes me happy. Sometimes itâs like, yeah, these guys are throwing punches at each other. Like Dana [White] says, he doesnât care about words that get said between one another and I 100% agree with that.â
ââŠBut, people are watching. Kids are watching. My kids see everything I do.â Jim Miller concluded. ââŠThey see it, and they see me do interviews, all this stuff. For them, and for all the other kids that are watching, I feel like thereâs a weight on my shoulders. To carry myself in a certain way.â
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Tea
Oh my fucking GOD, he better win 
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Jim Fucking Miller
Big fan, a true warrior and just hope he gets the ending he deserves sooner rather than later. Seen way too many go on too long!
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Jim Miller thought he was done.
It was 2016, and a multitude of health issues not only affected his training and preparation, but the results in Millerâs fights werenât helping much either. As he stumbled through a 1-3 octagon skid, the longtime veteran began readying for a showdown with Diego Sanchez at UFC 196, and he couldnât help but shake the feeling that the writing was the wall.
His MMA career was coming to end sooner than he expected.
âI was not having a go of it,â Miller told MMA Fighting ahead of his UFC 300 return against Bobby Green. â2015 was pretty hard on me, in the gym and I didnât know what was going on. I thought it was, âHey, youâve been a professional fighter for the last 10 years, this is what itâs supposed be like. Your knees hurt. Youâve got nerve issues and numbness and stuff. Yeah, youâre going to have memory problems.â
âIâve only been knocked unconscious twice in my life â itâs been inside the octagon. Itâs never happened in training, so itâs not like I take a ton of damage in training. I am a wrestler and I lead with my head, so we knew at that point too that itâs the little bumps, like from football, itâs all of that stuff. Itâs not necessarily the big jarring shots that you know it and you feel it. Itâs those little bumps that do add up. I figured this was all just from being a professional fighter for a decade. This is what Iâm going to have to deal with.â
But just days before his fight with Sanchez, Miller received a call from his doctor that finally explained why his health had taken a sudden and dramatic nosedive.
Miller was diagnosed with Lyme disease, an infection spread by ticks that causes a myriad of health issues, including fever, headache, and fatigue. When left untreated, the issues can spread to joints, the heart, and even the nervous system. The diagnosis quickly explained all of the problems that Miller had been dealing with, but he still didnât know how long it would take for treatment to actually make a difference for him.
Thatâs why, after booking his next fight several months later at UFC 200, Miller was ready to call it quits for good.
âI was diagnosed two or three days prior to that event,â Miller explained. âI was out in Las Vegas when I got the phone call from my doctor saying he thought I had Lyme disease. So it was like, I fought Diego [Sanchez], I came back and started my medication and my protocol, and I was like, âWell, aright, letâs ask to be on UFC 200.â
âIf this is it, if I can get out of this, then weâll see where it takes me. If I canât, if the next couple of weeks are as bad as the last year and a half have been, then I was willing to take my gloves off in the octagon at UFC 200.â
Miller didnât launch into his training camp thinking his career was on borrowed time, but he also knew there needed to be a dramatic difference in his physical condition if he was going to continue fighting beyond UFC 200.
He openly addressed the possibility that he might call it a career at the historic event, because thatâs just how bad his health had gotten after leaving the Lyme disease untreated.
âFortunately, I responded really quickly to the antibiotics,â Miller said. âIt was one of those things when youâre at 20 percent and you go to 30 percent, youâre like, âMan, this is amazing!â You feel like youâre on top of the world, but it was a long, slow climb out. It did take a lot longer than I thought it was going to.
âBut I was prepared. I was ready. I had already made that decision. Thatâs why I felt so comfortable talking about it, the last eight years, because I had made that decision. I had made the decision to walk away from the sport. Fortunately, a majority of the issues I was dealing with was from something unassociated with being a fighter and the lifestyle that I lead.â
With the possibility of retirement looming large over UFC 200, Miller was still unbelievably excited for the chance to share the octagon with a legend like Takanori Gomi.
There was a time not long before they met that Gomi was considered the No. 1 lightweight in the world across every promotion. Miller recognizes that wasnât the same Gomi he faced at UFC 200, but he never scoffed at the opportunity to clash with an all-time great.
âEven before I started training, before the UFC even brought back lightweight, he was the best lightweight guy on the planet,â Miller said. âI remember it was Takanori Gomi and Vitor âShaolinâ [Ribeiro]. These two guys are just awesome.
âYears later, I fought Takanori Gomi and I get to train with Vitor. This is amazing. It was awesome to hear that name. I understand at that point, the mileage on that guyâs body, he wasnât the same guy that made me fall in love with the sport. He was not that same fighter and I know that, but it was cool to get the opportunity to share the octagon with him. I wish it was when we were both in our primes, but itâs the way it goes. We werenât. I sure as s*** know that I wasnât at that point in my life. It was cool to get to fight him.â
Mostly healthy and nearly recovered from the effects of the Lyme disease, Miller needed less than three minutes to knock out Gomi and put his career back on track. It was a stunning turn of events, but more importantly it signaled that Miller really was on his way back after having years robbed from him while he was sick and just didnât know it.
Without the doctors that finally diagnosed his Lyme disease, Miller knows he wouldâve retired at UFC 200 â and that wouldâve prevented him from adding a whole slew of accolades to his rĂ©sumĂ© since that event in 2016.
âIf I had called it quits at [UFC] 200, the records and the talks that we have about potential Hall of Fame, they donât happen,â Miller said. âNow, granted, had I not gotten bit by a tick, who knows where I would have been at that point too. I was ranked No. 6 or something like that at one point. The things that I dealt with, they definitely pulled me down.
âFortunately, I was able to overcome it, and the biggest thing for me was knowing that I was going to fight. I was getting beat up everyday and I didnât know if I needed to be preparing everyday and getting one-percent better in that realm. Finding out that I had an opponent that was kicking my butt behind the curtain was huge, and just knowing that made it a lot easier to deal with it.â
Even now, at age 40, as he approaches his return at UFC 300, Miller says the same rules apply now as they once did at UFC 200.
For as much has changed eight years later, nothing has changed.
âFor me, itâs always been the training camp,â Miller said. âFight nightâs hard, fight weekâs hard, but itâs a very short period of time. Itâs those six, eight weeks leading up to a fight where youâre kicking your own ass, thatâs the hard part. Thatâs the grind. The fight is the reward.
âI knew with how those few weeks leading up to that fight went and how different they were from my previous few camps that, OK, we can still do this. It wasnât necessarily the results in the octagon that were driving me to retire. It was the months leading up to a fight. Thatâs the same thing today.â
19 ufc decisions in 43 UFC fights
That number of decisions is still less than
Angela Hill and Tecia Torres
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21 Decisions for Tecia Torres
23 Decisions for Farty pants Angela Hill
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Iâve watched Jim Miller since his debut and Iâve never known him as A-10 LOL
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Same, I didnât know that was his nickname up until a few years ago.
Did he change it or get given it a few yrs back
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Dude went out on his shield 