Pat Miletich (right) discusses MMA, MFS, and moving behind the mic for Showtime.

MMAMADNESS: How did you originally get started in MMA?

PAT MILETICH: A friend of mine who had refereed my Muay Thai kickboxing told me about an upcoming event, it was a winner take all event, so I told him to put my name in.

MM: What is your first memory as a mixed martial artist?

PM: My first memory was it dawning on me that everyone was very… they hold very close to their person the art that they studied, whether it was wrestling or boxing or jiu-jitsu. It was like it was part of their being, they were too prideful to learn the other arts to become well rounded. That was something that kind of dawned on me right away that was kind of necessary to beat everybody.

MM: At some point you went the opposite rout, because you developed the Miletich Fighting Systems and started training other fighters.

PM: For one, I needed to have good training partners to get ready for my fights, so I just took guys that were wrestlers and starting teaching them how to box. It was born from the recognition that every martial art had something to offer, so I tried to explore other types of boxing, namely boxing and Muay Thai, a little bit of Karate. I have a black belt in Karate. But also wrestling, jiu-jitsu, sambo. The way I started coaching people was really right away I wanted to have a lot of good training partners and I thought that if I could show that I could not just be a decent fighter but create good fighters that business wise at least people would recognize that I knew what I was talking about.

MM: Was there anyone you looked up to in the sport?

PM: I wouldn’t say there’s really one person at all because I admired a lot of the guys that were fighting, but there wasn’t really anybody that I aspired to be because everybody has kind of their own journey to be honest with you. When I was young running a football in games, I didn’t say ‘I’m Walter Payton,’ I was like, ‘I’m Pat Miletich.’

MM: You’ve seen this sport grow and evolve. What’s the most striking thing you’ve seen?

PM: I guess how the masses can be led easily to believe certain things about brand names and things like that. How the fans maybe don’t recognize enough how good the fighters are in all the major organizations like DREAM, Strikeforce, UFC. There are so many good fighters out there. Maybe now it’s slowly starting to change. The attempts by so many organizations at success that have fallen flat on their faces, it’s just been a tough road across the board.

MM: You’ve also done commentary work. How difficult is it talking about a fight on camera, as opposed to actually fighting?

PM: It’s interesting you ask, because I do pay attention to commentators, but I pay way more attention now. The job of being a commentator is a lot of pressure to make sure that you don’t say too many negative things about kids and affect their possibilities at earning down the road by something you say negative about them on the air. It’s really important to point out maybe the things that one kid might be doing really well and taking advantage of while defeating someone without really saying anything bad about the kid that’s losing the fight. I think it’s a pretty big responsibility by the commentators because you really to wield a lot of power, you have the potential to really hurt a kid’s career. I think it’s important to stay as positive as possible and on top of that, the play by play guys like Mauro Ranallo, Gus Johnson and [Mike] Goldberg, they’re all good friends of mine. You see on the forums, people that say negative things about each guy and things like that. Mauro Ranallo… If somebody sat for three days with us and went through the production meetings and watched him and watched him type up the opening of a show and watch him memorize… he’ll read off a computer screen three or for times the opening of a show while rehearsing it, and after that he’s pretty much done reading it. He’s remembered an entire open of a show, word for word, and he remembers my part, and he remembers the third man in the booth’s part also. Super intelligent guy, he has a memory like a bear trap, it’s amazing. The critics out there don’t realize how tough these guys’ jobs are. When they say three, two, one, live on TV, and you can’t screw up and you have to remember everything to say, trust me, those guys are good.