Jason "Mayhem" Miller has seen the highs and lows that fame can bring, and now the former MTV star and UFC fighter has some advice for young men: Put down the phone and toughen up.
Miller, 45, compiled a 23-10 record with one no contest over a colorful MMA career that included two stints in the UFC and fights against future champions Georges St-Pierre and Michael Bisping.
'Pick yourself up.'
Washing out the weakness
He was also one of MMA's great showmen, cultivating a villainous persona and making elaborate cage entrances that owed as much to professional wrestling as mixed martial arts.
"Mayhem" eventually crossed over to MTV as host of "Bully Beatdown," which ran for three seasons.
Then things fell apart.
In Miller's words: "I crashed out spectacularly. I was the first crashout in internet history."
After years of arrests, incarceration, addiction, and erratic behavior, Miller says he eventually managed to pick himself back up. Now he thinks young men need to learn how to do the same.
"Oh, it's you," Miller said before an interview with Blaze News.
With a shower running in the background, he put his camera down and announced, "I'll be a couple minutes."
He wasn't out partying. Miller was at Fight Science in Los Angeles, where he coaches.
The truth is, "Mayhem" still messes around quite a bit, even during interviews. But when he puts on his coaching hat, he starts dispensing advice that, in his words, "could fill your ears and your podcast servers for an infinite amount of time."
Determined to dump enough knowledge into young men's ears to "wash out the weakness," Miller said he's been stunned by how sensitive the country has become.
"Everyone is so soft in America now. I'm shocked at it. I'm really shocked at it," he said. "Our culture celebrates" falling into "this dark path because it's easy to fall into."
Young men can't simply rely on the status quo to provide them with a satisfying life, Miller argued. They have to make something happen for themselves.
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Dumping the 'rectangular girlfriend'
Schools force-fed kids a diet of "whatever" and then kicked them into the job market, Miller said.
"Oh, you're going to college? Oh, if not, here's an Uber Eats job, right? Like, here's your damn miserable existence for a while, and you're going to be swiping right all day till your thumb is arthritic."
But Miller insists that misery isn't destiny.
"Nobody's going to talk back to you until you start hustling. Pick yourself up," he told young men.
Go to the gym, Miller emphasized. Get some endorphins into your body. That's the least a young man with "no drive or motivation" can do.
Much of Miller's advice comes back to phone addiction and the device he variously calls the "magic square in your pocket" and the "rectangular girlfriend."
"It's not your girlfriend. Those girls that you're looking at are not your girlfriend. They're not even real. They're two-dimensional," Miller warned.
"Put that square back in your pocket. Use it for making money. And then talk to women face-to-face. Ten of them are going to tell you, 'Get lost.' The next one is going to tell you she loves you. So get after it, kids."
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Ethan Miller/Getty Image
Battle-ready
Miller also tells young Americans that some of the problems that feel overwhelming can be confronted only through deliberate effort.
"OK, 'I'm mad.' Is that real? Or can you count to 10 and take a breath?" he offered as an example. "'Oh, I'm sad.' Are you sad, or have you not worked through this trauma yet? You know, it takes effort to grow as a person."
Spending too much time with a computer doesn't help, Miller argued. And for all the advice he can dispense, he thinks one lost art matters more than most.
"You talk, and everybody shares their opinion. That's a lost art in America. You know, that's why the kids are lonely and [masturbating] and watching whatever all day. You know what I'm saying?"
Miller's rise, collapse, and recovery are the subject of a recent Vice episode of "Dark Side of the Cage," which has drawn hundreds of thousands of views since its September release.
These days, Miller describes himself as "leading men into battle" — on the mat and with enough advice, he says, to "fill the multiverse."
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