JRE MMA Show #18 with Pat Miletich

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Three, two, one. The great and powerful Pat Miletich.

Pat Miletich (0:10)

I don't know about that, but...

Joe Rogan (0:11)

You are. Listen, man, it's an honor to have you in here.

Pat Miletich (0:13)

Thank you. You know what? I've been watching your show for a long time, and you're a contrarian thinker. I love it.

And you've prompted a lot of people to think differently, right?

Joe Rogan (0:24)

Maybe. I think information prompts people to think differently.

Pat Miletich (0:27)

Well, when they get pounded with it enough and hear it enough, eventually it starts to sink in, right?

Joe Rogan (0:32)

Yeah, I think so, man. And when you talk about guys who have been around, you were one of the real pioneers of MMA. It's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you in here. I remember back when you were fighting, I remember back when you fought Matt Hume. And what was that like? Extreme Battlecade? Yeah, that was John Peretti's thing. I mean, dude, you've been around. You've been around. You were the early days, bare knuckle.

Pat Miletich (0:55)

Yeah, yeah, no. You know, and the thing is, I always tell people.

Joe Rogan (0:58)

Did you fight Dan Severin?

Pat Miletich (0:59)

Yeah, yeah, we fought to a draw.

Joe Rogan (1:01)

Who was 270 pounds at the time.

Pat Miletich (1:03)

Yeah, and he was still obviously pretty tough back then, still pretty mobile. It was not a fun fight, I can tell you, carrying his weight around for 30 minutes. But it was tough. But Matt Hume is the guy that made me realize that I wasn't a fighter yet because I was 15 and I think I was ranked fourth in the world. I fought Matt, ragdolled him for basically the whole first round, threw him around like a ragdoll. But he was just biding his time and waiting and he caught me with some knees and damaged my nose.

And the referee and the doctor stopped the fight because back then it was very controversial. They didn't want a guy with a crushed nose or whatever.

And so they stopped the fight. But I realized at that point, he knew a lot more than I did.

Joe Rogan (1:43)

That was an interesting fight because I totally disagree with that stoppage. And I was watching, I was like, this is crazy. How can you stop a fight for a broken nose?

Pat Miletich (1:50)

Well, I got headbutted, I used to spar with a lot of pro boxers. And I got headbutted by a pro boxer and he separated the cartilage from the bone. So that gap is still there.

So that's what they felt. My nose was bleeding a little bit. So that's why they stopped it.

Joe Rogan (2:04)

But broken noses are just normal.

Pat Miletich (2:06)

It happens, right.

Joe Rogan (2:07)

And it's not dangerous. It's like maybe somebody saw those movies where you like, remember in a movie, a guy would hit the bottom of a guy's nose and drive the bone up into his brain.

Pat Miletich (2:16)

It's like Mike Tyson talking about it, right? He did, he hit him like this and put the bone up through the brain.

Joe Rogan (2:22)

That might be the worst Mike Tyson impression I ever heard. I'm gonna let that go though.

Pat Miletich (2:27)

I'm doing my best, doing my best, man.

Joe Rogan (2:28)

Yeah, but back then, yeah, nobody really knew like what was dangerous, what wasn't dangerous. It wasn't like a body of fights that we could draw upon.

Pat Miletich (2:37)

And I was doing televised debates with politicians at the time.

Joe Rogan (2:40)

Were you really?

Pat Miletich (2:41)

To keep the sport legal in the state that I was scheduled to fight in. So think of how stressful it is to train for a fight, stay healthy, try and pay your bills, do all the stuff you're doing.

And at the same time, I'm debating politicians in that state who are trying to pass a bill to ban the sport that I'm scheduled to fight in that state. I'm panicking. I'm freaking out.

So I do my homework and I'd get in debates like Representative Boland from Illinois. By the time we got done with the debate, he goes, I'll agree with Mr. Miletich. He's obviously, you know, I think they expected to go into a debate with a punch drunk boxer.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

Right, right.

Pat Miletich (3:13)

And by the time the debate was done, I crushed him and he's like, well, maybe if we could just do away with headbutts, you know, that was his rebuttal at the end of it.