It’s always great to see former fighters, especially legendary ones, go on to productive, fulfilling careers after their fighting days have passed. One of the best examples of this is the way Pat Miletich has segued into commentary and fight analysis roles for a multitude of promotions. What if he were to go a step further, and maybe take the plunge into politics? His Twitter feed is the very picture of a socially conscious activist, with his political views prominently displayed. I recently interviewed Pat, who says that while he has no immediate plans to run for office, he’s not ruling it out in the future.
In addition to his penchant for politics, we discussed a variety of other topics ranging from his take on the Diaz / GSP fight to a wild adventure in Mexico while filming a movie. Here’s what he had to say:
Current state of MMA
I think there’s no true competition in the promotions, at this point, for the athletes to barter or have any negotiating power. There’s no one, legit ranking system. There’s no true world titles. There are organizational titles, and obviously the UFC has the most coveted organizational titles, but there’s no true world title. It goes to show with the way the Strikeforce guys, after the doors closed, have come over to the UFC and have been wrecking shop, that organizational belts don’t necessarily mean that you’re the number one guy in the world.
The politics of title shots
If you’re a good looking blonde, you get the belt before you ever fought for them, right? With no sanctioning body overseeing the sport, truly overseeing it, then the owners of the company, whatever company it is, have every right to do whatever the hell they want. They put their champion fighters against certain guys who are marketable and are going to sell tickets. Until that happens, there’s really no complaining to do. You either figure out a way to have a group oversee the sport and do it right, or you deal with it.
Fallon Fox
I think if you have a Y chromosome in your body, you’re a man, no matter what hardware you have surgically removed, changed or done whatever. You’re still a man. I talked to a lot of female fighters and they think it’s bullshit. I agree with them. There’s nothing that changes the fact that Fallon Fox was born a man. So what if he lopped off his junk. I mean hey, you’re still a man [laughs]. Fallon’s confusion does not transfer over to my confusion. He still has a Y chromosome.
I don’t have anything against anybody that’s transgender, gay, or whatever. Whatever they do to their own body is their decision. That’s just the way it is, and I don’t have a problem with that. You can’t then expect to cross over and beat the shit out of girls. A transgender league might be a great idea. Maybe Dana White would be interested in that. Sell some tickets, right [laughs]?
TRT
I have no idea what to think any more. I spent 17 years fighting professionally, and obviously as you get older, you lose a step and your test levels go down, but the amount of knowledge you gain over that time, there’s a lot of knowledge. If I’m able to get my levels back up to when I was 21 or 22 years old, awesome. Then I’ve regained some of that strength and aggression back, and I have all that knowledge over the young guys. It could help a lot, but, in the end, it comes down to this. If you fight too long, no matter what, you’re going to end up having physical problems.
A lot of these guys that are doing that, extending their career longer than it would normally be possible, I fear for them with some of the damage that is going to be done to their bodies. Sure, they might be stronger than normal now, but in the end, it comes down to how these guys are going to be 20 years from now. Are they still going to be able to spell their name?
The Death & Life of Bobby Z
I actually still get residual checks from that movie. It’s not a substantial amount, and then the SAG group gets their percentage of it, too. Apparently, I’ve managed to stumble into the Screen Actor’s Guild. Was my performance in that movie Oscar worthy, or what [laughs]?
It’s funny, I tell people this and they laugh their asses off. We had a blast filming that movie. It was down in Baja, Mexico. I was standing around with Laurence Fishburne, the Carradine brothers, Paul Walker and a bunch of other guys, the producers and directors. I looked at Rob (Lawler), and I said, ‘Are you gonna go to the initial screening of this when they have it in LA?’ He goes, ‘Are you f*cking kidding me? This thing is going straight to Blockbuster.’ [laughs] All the actors looked at Rob like he was the most honest guy they’d ever met.
Filming down in Mexico, Ensenada, Rosarita, people in Southern California are probably very familiar with those towns, and even then, it was pretty dangerous. A lot of people from the cast and the producers were getting pulled over and robbed by the federales and the Rosarita police.
One time, we came out of a Mexican restaurant. It was Rob Lawler, Sam Sheridan, Tim Sylvia and myself. We got into Sam’s car, when a cop comes up and tells us to shut the engine off. Sam speaks Spanish, so he’s holding a conversation with this cop, and an old man with a cane is walking by, and he starts yelling at the cop for harassing us. The cop literally looked like he was going to beat the hell out of the old man.
The cop comes back to our car and tells us we have to follow him to the police station. We had just heard, the day before from Paul Walker, about a family friend of his who got arrested in Mexico and was held for a couple years. They kept demanding money from the family for ransom. After taking a ton of money from the family, they’d finally decided to let him go.
I said to the guys in the car, ‘If they try to get us to go into the police station, it’s on. We’re not that far from the border. We’re going to knock all these guys out, and then we’re going to jump in the car and haul ass for the border. They got us out of the car, and they started trying to reach in our pockets. They just wanted to take our money, basically. Tim Sylvia started swatting them away and yelling at them. [laughs] He was definitely freaking them out a little bit.
Fortunately, one of the cops recognized Robbie and myself, and we told them who Tim was, then it was, ‘Oh señor, you go now.’ We got out of that one, luckily, by them recognizing who we were, but it was gonna get ugly. Mexico is not a place I’ll be going back to any time soon. It’s pretty bad when your available options are to trounce four Mexican police officers or get taken to a dirt floor jail.
Georges St. Pierre vs Nick Diaz
GSP has usually always fought smart. I doubt very much that he’s going to stand up with Diaz early on. I think if he does, that will be Nick’s chance to catch him and hurt him. Nick is pretty impressive, striking-wise, and he can take a lot of abuse. I just see it as GSP being too athletic, too explosive and too well rounded. He’s too big, physically, and most likely, he’s going to be taking him down and making Diaz carry his weight.
After he’s got Diaz a little bit more exhausted in the later rounds, he might stand up with him a little bit. I just don’t see Nick as being physical enough to be able to deal with GSP. I might be wrong, though. It is MMA and anything can happen, but I don’t see Georges as being dumb enough to just stand in there with him for any length of time, early on in the fight. Most likely, it’s going to be Georges winning the decision or a referee stoppage.
Freemasonry
I was always someone who paid attention to history, even as a kid. The freemasons always seemed to be the guys that were the leaders in the nation and development. They stood against tyranny and oppression. If you look at the French Revolution, the freemasons were largely responsible for getting that going when the people were being oppressed by the Catholic church.
There’s a lot of misnomers and misunderstandings in thinking that freemasons are anti-religious, or against God. People think it’s some kind of Satanic cult or something, but none of that is true. It’s pretty comical when I hear stuff like that.
The battle of the Alamo, the guys who defended the Alamo, Bowie, Crockett and Travis and those guys, were all freemasons. It’s cool when you think of Bowie, who was leading that group, and they were inside the Alamo when the Mexican general said, ‘Give us your guns and give up’, and Bowie’s answer was to launch a cannon ball into the opposing forces [laughs]. There’s your answer.
There are also all the good, charitable things the masons have done, the Shriners hospitals and all the charities for the kids, and for the elderly. That’s one of the big things that they do, is charitable work with children and elderly people. That’s why I joined.
*It should be noted that try as I might, Pat would not tell me how to do the Freemason secret handshake.*
Politics
You know, I guess it’s just caring and paying attention to what’s going on around me, that got me active. What people don’t understand, and I flat out call them out on it, is that the democratic party was infiltrated by socialists a long time ago. It’s slowly and gradually manifested itself, and it’s what we see today in our administration. Socialism, in my mind, and most people’s minds, is very evil in nature. They pass it off as being kind and giving to people, but it’s evil in nature, in what it does to the human spirit, by taking away the goals and desires of the people.
The minorities are starting to recognize that welfare and food stamp programs and all those types of things, are just a new form of slavery. The unfortunate thing about it, the double whammy of it, is that the poor of this nation are attached to one end of the chain, and the people that are paying for it are attached to the other end, so basically in Washington DC, they’ve enslaved an entire nation.
Instead of inspiring people to stand up and lead their own lives and become independent, obviously by giving them the right education and things like that, they’ve given them the excuse to give up. I don’t know how I would wake up every day thinking that way. It’s just not in my fabric.
The vast majority of people that are on welfare and food stamps don’t want to be, but they haven’t been given the opportunities and the atmosphere and job creation that they need to be able to get out there and be productive and seek their own lives. The American public has been duped, and that’s the sad thing about it. It’s not just the Obama administration, it goes back quite a few before that.
I’ve considered a political career, but I have too many things to accomplish before I go into that. I sit down with a lot of guys who have run for office or are already politicians, and I know how exhausting it is and how taxing it can be on the family. I really don’t want to put my family through that. I may be more useful in being on TV and sending out tweets and Facebook posts and giving speeches around the country, which I do regularly.
Time will tell. I’ve certainly been wanting to, because I’m so upset with what’s going on with our country right now. There just needs to be people that can be bold and flat out say, ‘Listen, enough is enough.’
Just the other day, they announced that the illegal aliens in Colorado get in state tuition if they lived there and graduated from a Colorado high school. What the hell were they doing graduating from a Colorado high school when they were here illegally in the first place? At the same time, the GI bill for the American soldiers has been taken away. Guys who are out there risking their lives for my country so my kids can sleep at night in peace, don’t get the tuition help that they deserve, yet illegal immigrants can go to school at higher learning institutions for in state tuition prices, and my kids, who are American legal citizens, don’t get that. At some point, the American public has got to start fighting these politicians back.
I honestly don’t even know that I would run as a republican. I’m so upset with both sides of the fence. I’m not a registered independent, but I see myself and visualize myself as an independent, because now you’ve got the democrats, who are in essence, socialists and Marxists, which I find extremely vile. For a long time, we were losing American soldiers, fighting the spread of that poison, and now we’ve got it sitting in Washington DC. The republican party is just a slightly watered down version of that. It’s really sad what this has spiraled into.
You can follow Pat via his Twitter account, @PatMiletich
Disclaimer: The opinions stated in this interview are totally those of the subject and do not reflect the opinion of Steph Daniels, Bloody Elbow, SBNation or Vox Media.
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