Matt Lindland is ready for StrikeForce Newcomer "Jacare'' Souza

Lindland (21-6) will take on submission expert “Jacare” Souza (10-2) at middleweight (185 pounds) on the star-studded fight card being headlined by Cung Le vs. Scott Smith at HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif.

Lindland, the 2000 Olympic Games silver medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling, holds wins against Pat Miletich , as well as former champion Carlos Newton   and Jeremy Horn. Lindland is one of only two men to submit Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Travis Lutter  .

QUESTION: How’s your training been going for Dec. 19?

LINDLAND: “How’s my training going? I answer those questions every day. Can’t you be a little more creative than that? My training is going good and if it wasn’t I’d lie to you anyway and tell you it was.”

QUESTION: OK. Fair enough. We’ll get right into the politics questions. In 2008 you won the primary for a seat on the Oregon House of Representatives but were defeated in the general election. What did you learn from that experience and how active are you currently in politics?

LINDLAND: “You know, I’m really not that active. I’m an activist. I’m a registered Republican and I just felt it was my civic duty to run. I felt like we did not have a qualified candidate to run. Would I run for politics again if I had to? Yeah, absolutely. I would first try and find someone more qualified than me to do it and get behind them and support them instead but if I felt there wasn’t anyone qualified then I would.

QUESTION: You must have learned a lot during your run in politics?

LINDLAND: “I did learn a lot about the political process. I learned it’s not about valuables and principles but how much money you can raise. Politics is dirtier then NHB (No Holds Barred) when fighting was first starting and there were no rules. Politics has fewer rules than that.”

QUESTION: Who is the toughest fighter you’ve ever faced?

LINDLAND: “I think it just really depends on what point of my career I was in. I mean, early in my career I faced the legend Pat Miletich (in 2003). Then I had to face Fedor Emelianenko (in 2007) who is the best heavyweight in the world. It just depends on where you’re at in your career and when you’re fighting these guys. But I guess the obvious answer would have to be Fedor. Everyone knows I’ve fought him and he’s a phenomenal fighter.”

QUESTION: You fought him in Russia. Was that tougher to do on his home soil than over here in the States? And would you like to face him again?

LINDLAND: “I think so. They don’t make calls in Russia when guys grab ropes and stuff. He’s in a different weight class now. It’s a fight I don’t need to take but I’ll fight whoever. It doesn’t matter to me.”

QUESTION: Do your two children James and Robin like and participate in mixed martial arts?

LINDLAND: “Robin is a sophomore and doing track and field. As far as martial arts goes she’s the highest ranked kid we’ve ever had come out of our kid’s program. Both kids are pretty active in studying the martial arts. It’s not something they’re pursuing long term but I think teaching martial arts to kids, any combative sport, is a must. It teaches them a lot of good principles.

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.

Pat Miletich settles issues with Dana White but will it mean we will see Pat in the octagon?

Written by Cameron Gidari

Over the past few months, UFC president Dana White has reconciled with Tito Ortiz and Affliction. Now, White has mended another burned bridge.

White spoke with Pat Miletich at the UFC 101 weigh-ins, and the result could be Miletich back in the octagon.

“We were finally able to talk and get some things out of the way so it was good,” Miletich told MMAMadness.com.

“We touched on me potentially fighting in the UFC again, but nothing was concrete,” Miletich said. “The door was left open, so that was good.”

Miletich has not fought in the UFC since 2002, when he suffered a TKO loss to Matt Lindland.

Much of the bitterness between Miletich and White resurfaced when a recent E:60 piece on ESPN, where Miletich was quoted as saying that nothing White had ever told him was true. White responded by calling Miletich a “(expletive) dummy.”

However, Miletich explained that ESPN’s use of that interview was misleading.

“The interview from the E:60 piece was really, really old,” Miletich said. ”It was like a year and a half old at least. It was just something that got brought back out and aired.”

“That just kind of put gas on fire,” Miletich said. “Obviously he’s going to react negatively to that, so I said, ‘we’ve got to squash this.’”

With the relationship apparently healed, Miletich is now mulling over whether to return to fighting. He is certain that a repaired relationship is beneficial to everyone.

“I think it’s always good for all of us to at least coincide as best we can and get along because it’s for the benefit of everybody,” Miletich said. “It’s always better to have friends than enemies.”

Cameron Gidari is the Associate Editor at MMAMadness.com. He can be reached with questions and comments at cameron@mmamadness.com.