Even in the world of MMA fighters, Jason “Mayhem” Miller stood out as an unpredictable wild man with a flair for theatrics — the sort who pauses in the middle of pummeling his opponent to smile at the camera and flash a peace sign.
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Fans will remember his show-stopping entrance to a 2009 bout, in which he strutted down a staircase in a sparkling silver suit, trailed by an entourage of synchronized dancers dressed as Japanese schoolgirls.
Sadly, they will also remember the infamous string of drug and alcohol-fueled arrests that helped crash his career, one of which involved breaking into a church and setting off fire extinguishers while naked and another of which drew a SWAT team to his house.
But after a stint in jail and another in rehab, the Fayetteville native is enjoying both sobriety and a second act, working as a mentor and coach to young fighters. His rollercoaster arc from stardom to a Skid Row mattress unfolds in a new episode of “Dark Side of the Cage,” the Vice series aimed at exposing the fighting world’s underbelly.
Even the non-fan who would rather watch the Fireplace Channel than mixed martial arts can agree Miller’s life makes an irresistible story.
“I realize the importance and gravity of being in the public eye now, and I didn’t before,” he told me Thursday, on the phone from Los Angeles. “I saw it as a weird place, where you could get free drinks.”
Miller, now 45, grew up in Fayetteville and attributes much of his own gritty character to the Army town of his youth, which tracks for anyone who experienced the strip-joint promenade of Bragg Boulevard in the 1990s.
Though “Fayettenam” has spiffed up its image and now features an art house theater downtown, it enjoyed a reputation during Miller’s high school years as a fabulous place to get annihilated — either in the sense of being intoxicated or beaten to death.
“I got rough and tumbled by a lot of kids out there,” said Miller, who attended Seventy-First High School. “Playing pickup hoops is dangerous. You step on man’s Jordan’s … It could be argued that I bullied one kid, but I specifically told him to stop hanging out with my girlfriend and he wouldn’t listen. He was huge, so I wasn’t taking on a small guy.”
Somewhat incorrigible, often in trouble, Miller underwent a rigorous form of domestic boot camp with his Army father as drill sergeant, a routine punctuated by lawn-mowing and five-mile jogs.
“I cut his hair off with dog clippers,” his father Mike told “Dark Side of the Cage.”
Somewhere in there, Miller figured a way to channel his natural scrappiness into professional fighting, and he started training in a local gym, rejecting his father’s advice on pursuing a computer career.
Then, way before anybody thought him capable, he got matched with Hawaiian favorite Egan Inouye in Honolulu, where he not only won but busted his opponent’s rib over loud boos from the crowd.
That break led to more breaks and the outsized character of Mayhem emerged, wearing a hockey mask and waving a machete, hair dyed cherry red, dancing and mugging for the camera.
This showy behavior caught the attention of MTV, which created the reality show “Bully Beatdown” especially for his prankster nature. In it, Miller traveled the country seeking out sadistic pseudo-tough guys and challenging them to a fight with an MMA pro. If the bullies lost, which they always did, their victims got the prize money.
“Anything you want to say to these guys right now?” he asks one bully after an embarrassing loss.
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“I think I’m going to throw up,” the bully croaks.
“What is that, tuna?” Miller hilariously asks.
When we spoke Thursday, I asked Miller how he developed this character, whether he drew on his Fayetteville experiences or created Mayhem out of thin air.
This rubbed Mayhem wrong.
“I do not play a character,” he corrected. “That is me. I am Mayhem and I earned my title. I reject your premise.”
So I reworded the question: “But you have a style to your fighting — the humor, the masks, the costumes — that other fighters don’t have …
“Oh,” he said. “You mean my panache.”
The “Dark Side” episode places much weight on a family party, thrown to celebrate Miller’s sucess, in which he clashed with his sister Megan.
The two had roughhoused as children, but according to Megan in the show, her brother was drinking and smoking while training for a big fight, and he placed her in a headlock and cut off her airway.
So she called both police and TMZ on her brother, telling the show, “You can’t go putting your hands on people. … He needed to be taught a lesson.”
And around this time, the crash-out began for real.
He sabotaged an Internet radio interview. He walked uninvited into the ring and interrupted a fighter’s post-bout interview, triggering a brawl on live television. He declined to answer the door when sheriff’s deputies arrived at his house with a warrant, which led to a four-hour standoff with a SWAT team on-hand.
He struggled with medication for his ADHD. He struggled with depression. He had manic episodes. He lost friends, his contract with UFC and all of his possessions. Nobody came to pick him up after his last term in jail, so Miller went looking for a mattress to crash on.
“I just got to a spot where you’re like, ‘I’m living like a junkie,’“ he told me. “It gets into you, and you’ve got to fight your way out of it. … The best thing about a downward spiral is, hey man, it goes back up.”
Once sober, an old MMA friend picked him to help counsel veterans with PTSD in a program that pairs them with ex-professional athletes, the idea being both face problems when the uniform comes off.
And as a coach, Miller describes himself “playing dad to 100 animals,” calling them highly sensitive monsters — beasts inside the ring but needy as children outside of it.
What do you say, I asked him at the end of our interview, when young fighters tell you, “Man, I want to be like Mayhem.”
“You can’t,” he told me. “Go be you. There’s no Mayhem before or after me. I cut my path. I made my own. I humbly accept this honor by being Mayhem.”
“How can we inspire people to be better athletes and better people?” he continued. “Who else are they gonna be? Mayhem? Good luck.”
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