No Records, No Hall Of Fame! Miller Nearly Bailed After UFC 200

Jim Miller has aged like a fine wine in mixed martial arts (MMA).

Incredibly, the 40-year-old Lightweight veteran, Miller, is making his dream of becoming the only tri-centenial Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter a reality. By that, it means Miller will be the only fighter to have fought on UFC 100, UFC 200, and UFC 300, come the latter event in Las Vegas next weekend (Sat., April 13, 2024).

However, the polished 55-fight veteran (37-17, 1 no contest) was on the cusp of cutting his career short after UFC 200 and his battle with Lyme disease — a tick-spread infection — in July 2016.

“I was diagnosed two or three days prior to that event,” Miller told MMA Fighting. “I 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, ‘Well, aright, let’s ask to be on UFC 200.’

“If this is it, if I can get out of this, then we’ll see where it takes me,” he continued. “If I can’t, 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.”

Miller went into the event 1-4 in his previous five fights and lost the Sanchez clash via a unanimous decision. Ultimately, Miller needed just over two minutes to finish the Japanese legend, Takanori Gomi, with strikes.

“Fortunately, I responded really quickly to the antibiotics,” Miller said. “It was one of those things when you’re at 20 percent and you go to 30 percent, you’re like, ‘Man, this is amazing!’ You feel like you’re 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.

“But I was prepared. I was ready. I had already made that decision,”’ he continued. “That’s 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.”

The record for most UFC wins (26) belongs to Miller, who’s added 11 to his resume since UFC 200. He rides a two-fight winning streak into UFC 300 for his fight against Bobby Green and could potentially find himself back in the promotion’s rankings with a win.

Should it happen, Miller only boosts his argument for the Hall of Fame.

“If I had called it quits at [UFC] 200, the records and the talks that we have about potential Hall of Fame, they don’t happen,” Miller said. “Now, 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.

“Fortunately, I was able to overcome it, and the biggest thing for me was knowing that I was going to fight,” he continued. “I was getting beat up every day and I didn’t know if I needed to be preparing every day 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.”

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