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Five or six years ago, Jim Miller was joking with his longtime strength and conditioning coach, Martin Rooney, about fighting at UFC 300.
Rooney couldn’t help but do the math. Miller would be 40 years old and likely have more than 30 UFC fights on his resume by that point.
The laugh turned into a goal in mid-December, when UFC officially announced the date and location of the milestone event.
Miller, a 40-year-old father of four who grew up in Sussex County, was formally added to the card in mid-January, a few days after a third-round submission of Gabriel Benitez. He will fight Bobby Green in a lightweight early prelim to UFC 300 on Saturday in Las Vegas.
He will be the only fighter to compete at UFC 100, 200 and 300.
“I’ll be the old man and still be finishing my fights. That’s OK with me,” Miller said in an exclusive interview with the USA TODAY Network New Jersey. “I’m going to continue to fight the way I’ve always fought. I want to go out and end the career the way I started the career: to fight aggressively and leave it all in the Octagon.”
Jim Miller’s long walk to UFC 300
Miller made his UFC debut in October 2008 at UFC 89, submitting David Baron with a rear naked choke. His style hasn’t changed much over the years. He’s an aggressive fighter, always looking for a quick finish.
Relying on power rather than endurance is part of the secret of Miller’s longevity in UFC, according to Rooney. Miller has won five of his last six bouts, including a 23-second knockout of Jesse Butler in June.
Miller holds the UFC records for fights (43) and wins (26), and has spent the most time in the Octagon of any lightweight (6 hours, 32 minutes, 47 seconds). He has 15 first-round finishes, 19 wins by submission and seven by knockout.
More:When does UFC 300 start? List of fights, how to watch, stream & the betting odds
“Father Time is undefeated, but the way to keep him at bay is to do what Jim is doing,” said Rooney, who trained Miller in Fair Lawn four days a week even before he signed with UFC in 2008.
“He’s in this zone where it’s not time to be nervous or uptight, or ‘I have to do this.’ He’s doing it for him, to put a stamp on a career few will ever match. Maybe nobody matches it. I think that’s a really neat place to come from.”
Finding balance in and out of the Octagon
Miller has always built his career around family. Jim and his older brother Dan were wrestlers at Sparta High School, then came up through mixed martial arts together. At the same time, they were working construction with their father.
Jim cited his dad as a role model. “A mountain of a man” at 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, Mike Miller would “do physical, athletic things” on a job site and then come home and cook meals for the family. Jim recalled his father “covered in sap from lumber and chainsaw gas and his own blood” holding doors open for strangers and never forgetting to say “thank you.”
Mike and Barbara Miller attended nearly all of their sons’ early UFC fights.
When Jim and Dan Miller opened their namesake Sparta gym 10 years ago, the logo – a pair of crossed hammers over a Spartan shield – referred to their father and hometown.
Coming out of the pandemic, they sold the gym to then-manager Jim Fitzpatrick. Now known as Sussex County MMA, it’s still Jim Miller’s training base. He and his team didn’t leave for Las Vegas until Tuesday, preferring to keep life in balance as long as possible.
Even leading up to a fight, Jim and wife Angel Miller still have four kids to get off to school, plus the usual assortment of wrestling, dance, baseball, softball and other activities. The family also has goats, mini-pigs, chickens and ducks to feed, a garden and fruit trees to look after. And, Jim Miller noted, “there’s always a problem to solve” living in a 150-year-old house on their Stillwater farm.
Though the animals are treated as pets, Miller – an avid hunter – said the male ducks, in particular, might wind up on the family dinner table. Eating whole foods became a big part of Miller’s life after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2016, following years of mysterious symptoms. Miller has also cut down on alcohol consumption, because it both causes inflammation and interferes with his sleep.
Said Miller, “I try to have as much control as I can, and keep it as basic as I can.”
Jim Miller’s legacy – and future plans
Miller may have been joking again when he said the next record he wants is the most UFC fights before winning a title. It’s likely a win on Saturday gets him back into the lightweight rankings for the first time in years.
Another of Miller’s longtime trainers, Brian McLaughlin, called the matchup “cursed” and questioned whether it will even happen. This is the fourth time Miller and Green were scheduled to fight since April 2014. Green has pulled out three times, once after failing a drug test and another time when he collapsed following the weigh-in.
‘It’s time to fight’:With mom as manager, North Jersey teen boxer aims at Olympics
Three years older and two inches shorter than his opponent, Miller is a significant underdog leading up to the fight.
“Jim didn’t just build himself. He built the whole North Jersey mixed martial arts empire,” said McLaughlin, Miller’s main training partner from 2008 to 2012. “AMA Fight Club (in Whippany) was built off him and his brother Dan as well. The Miller brothers built North Jersey MMA. People were moving from across the globe to train with them, and now North Jersey is the place that builds fighters.”
Last week, UFC announced a June 1 card at the Prudential Center in Newark – but it’s much too soon to be Miller’s hometown farewell. He’d like to go out in front of his family and longtime training team.
But Miller, who talked about retirement after UFC 200 due to the Lyme complications, still has professional goals. He’s thinking about one more fight this calendar year. He wants to get to 50 UFC fights, a potentially insurmountable record for anyone in the future.
His No. 1 goal is to go out on his own terms.
“Fight Night is easy, honestly. It’s 15 minutes, maybe 25 minutes,” Miller said. What grinds him down is “the day-to-day, six days a week beating yourself up doing the live training, doing the sparring. When I can’t get through camps, that’s when it’s going to be time to call it quits. We’re not there yet.”
Jane Havsy is a storyteller for the Daily Record and DailyRecord.com, part of the USA TODAY Network. For full access to live scores, breaking news and analysis, subscribe today.
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Email: JHavsy@gannett.comTwitter: @dailyrecordspts
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