The Steve Austin Show – Unleashed!
Guest: Pat Miletich
Release Date: 6/1/2017
Recap by: Chris Gaspare
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Top Newsworthy Items
– Miletich wants to see more MMA organizations and would like to see fighters gets stock options
-Miletich was paralyzed during training for his last fight
– Austin will start having Wade Keller on every Thursday for 10-15 minutes to discuss the week’s news
Timestamps
00:00: Sponsor Ad
01:09: Introduction to the show and Austin discusses L.A. and June Gloom
12:50: Sponsor Ad
14:49: Miletich on his current projects
22:37: Miletich discusses the growth of UFC and bouncing
37:12: Sponsor Ad
39:42: Miletich and Austin discuss stunt fighting in movies, Robbie Lawler’s ferocity, and Bas Rutten
55:54: Miletich on his neck injuries, his training regimen, and diet plus a funny UFC story
Show Highlights
Introduction to the show and Austin discusses L.A. and June Gloom
Austin informed the audience on June Gloom, which is when southern Los Angeles is cloudy and cool for the month, which leads many people to be depressed because they are so used to sunshine the rest of the year. Austin’s favorite thing about L.A. is the weather and that includes June Gloom because it gives everyone a break. He is going on a mini-vacation to a “gimmick hotel” in Santa Barbara this weekend. He hopes to find some collectibles in antique stores to help fill out his “mancave” that will become the home of The Steve Austin Show. He is still shooting steel targets and skeet shooting, but he hopes to find something more tailored to what he wants in L.A. still. He also announced he will have Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows on his show in the next couple weeks, and he wants to talk to them about New Japan and Southpaw Regional Wrestling. He plugged the filming of the newest season of the Broken Skull Challenge before going to commercial.
Miletich on his current projects
Miletich will be commentating a Legacy Fighting Alliance card with broadcast partner Michael Schiavello this week on AXS TV. This will be Schiavello’s last time broadcasting as he is moving back to Australia with his family next week. Austin complimented Schiavello’s professionalism and had one of his best interviews he gave on Schiavello’s show The Voice Versus. Miletich said that Schiavello has stated his best interviews were Austin and amateur wrestler Dan Gable. Miletich also has his own podcast called The Conspiracy Farm. A recent episode featured Sibel Edmonds discussing Operation Gladdio and Operation Gladdio B, which is a NATO plan to leave U.S.-trained soldiers behind in Europe to repel Russian attempts to invade the continent.
Miletich discusses the growth of UFC and bouncing
Miletich was asked about UFC today compared to Miletich’s time. He responded that there’s more money, and hence, better athletes coming into the sport. Now that MMA pays more money, less young people are going into boxing and more into wrestling in high school and college. He still doesn’t understand why fighters are not more well-rounded in their fighting technique, but overall, the sport is getting better. Even though Bellator is improving, he would still like to see two or three major MMA organizations so that fighters have multiple venues to make money. He also thinks that buying UFC for four billion was too much to spend and thinks the new owners will regret it. He said he believes that a new company that provided stock options to fighters when they retire would do well because it would keep fighters loyal.
Austin asked him about what goes into being on the top of the card now, and Miletich said that talking and promos have become a key factor. He said that obviously Chael Sonnen and Conor McGregor are some of the best talkers in the business. During his time, Miletich said he could not get away with that. Instead, he had to talk like a “gentleman” because there was so much heat on the sport. He was instead debating and giving testimony to Congress about the “safety” of the sport. Ultimately, he realized safety didn’t matter to the government because boxing and little league are more deadly than MMA; they only wanted “their cut” of the money in the business.
Austin and Miletich talked about their football careers; Miletich played in high school as a nose guard. He could lift 300 pounds at the time but was only 165 pounds. He wanted to play college football, but he didn’t grow as he expected. He follows sports, but the seasons are too long for him so he only watches championships or playoffs. The recent Bryce Harper altercation leads them to talking about Miletich’s days working as a bouncer in a bar. The owner of one bar decided to have a Hip Hop Night, and Miletich warned him that gang fights may occur. On the first night, one did. Miletich was caught in a headlock, but still managed to choke out two others while in the headlock, back his way out the door into a snowstorm. The incident ended with him back-to-back with six cops being surrounded before police got the situation under control. Austin asked him advice if someone has a knife or a gun. Miletich said that if the person has a knife, then “run.” If they have a gun, then “get close to them.”
Miletich and Austin discuss stunt fighting in movies, Robbie Lawler’s ferocity, and Bas Rutten
When the show returns from commercial, they discuss stunt fighter and former wrestler Paul Lazenby’s book When We Were Bouncers. Miletich met Lazenby because he was initially going to include an inaccurate bouncer story, created by a former stalker, about Miletich in his book, but Miletich corrected him leading to a friendship. Austin knows Lazenby because he was a stuntman on an Austin movie called Damage. During filming a fight scene, Austin accidentally caught Lazenby in the nose and “pushed it in an inch,” but Lazenby finished the scene before his nose erupted in blood. Miletich only did work for one movie, a Paul Walker vehicle titled Bobby Z, which was about guy who deals drugs over the internet.
The director, John Herzfeld, wanted to add a fight scene in the film and contacted Miletich to choreograph and bring in fighters for it. One of the fighters for the film was UFC star Robbie Lawler. Miletich and his fighters, along with some tech crew and cameramen, had not been paid yet when they were shooting scenes in the desert that required Lawler to lie in the hot sun for half the day. Lawler became upset with assistant director Tony Adler and threatened to “cave [his] f***ing head in,” which of course terrified the director. Miletich was able to calm him down and told him to take a walk for a bit. Later, Paul Walker found out about the non-payment that day, and he threatened to shut down production if everyone wasn’t paid. Miletich was owed $40,000, and the next day had $400,000 wired into his account. The producers were worried and wanted him to wire the extra money back, but he decided to play a game with them, and since some tech crew still weren’t paid, he held the money hostage until they were. He was never approached about any more movie work, but didn’t really care for it because it was too much “hurry up and wait” for him.
In another Lawler story, he reminisced on a time where they were at a bar and MMA fighter Tony Fryklund was at the bar with an attractive Latina. The Latin Kings gang were in the bar as well, and the next thing he knows, Lawler is single-handedly taking out this gang. Later, he found out that Lawler overheard that the girl was one of the member’s girlfriend and they were planning on jumping Frycklund. He said that Lawler is “quiet” but dangerous when mad.
Miletich himself tries to avoid any street fights, as he called them. He once crushed someone’s face and fractured another’s skull which he almost went to jail for. One time, however, a drunk male bumped into him purposely at a bar and tried to fight. He told the guy he didn’t want trouble, and the drunk man asked him “Do you know who you’re f***ing with? I’m Pat Miletich.” All of Miletich’s friends lost it in laughter, and Miletich pulled out his ID to show the man and asked him, “Are you gonna leave me alone now?” The guy left after that. Austin brought up a confrontation between Bas Rutten and former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, but neither man went into detail other than it was based on some confusion. Miletich did tell a story about Rutten. They were celebrating victories they had had on the same card in Roppongi, Japan. Miletich noticed these Nigerian bouncers coming toward him, and he thought a fight was going to break out. However, they asked politely asked him if he could ask Rutten to stop dancing on the bar. Miletich told them it was their club and they should ask Rutten, who is a respectful and polite guy, to stop and he’ll stop. The bouncers were too scared though, so Miletich had him stop.
Miletich on his neck injuries, his training regimen, and diet plus a funny UFC story
Austin asked Miletich about his neck and the end of his fighting career. Miletich said he should have stopped long before he actually stopped. He said he ended up paralyzed from the neck down during the training before his last fight. In his last fight, which he won by KO, he was scared to take a punch from his opponent and that fright is what made him realize he should quit to be there for his family. After retiring, he had the neck fusion surgery that doctors had been pushing on him for years. Austin asked about his workout routine and his diet. Miletich is spending a lot of time running now. One activity he said is to run a mile, do 150 burpees in between, and repeat. He did this ten times in about two hours and twenty minutes. His running coach named David Clark has him on a regimen as well that involves speed and incline running. He suggested that Austin have Clark on his podcast to hear his story.
Clark was a 320-pound alcoholic who started running and competes in long marathon runs. He told a story about Clark completing a 135-mile run in Death Valley up into the mountains and hallucinated that the road was talking to him for nine hours. In terms of Miletich’s diet, he is eating mostly vegan with some eggs still for protein. Even though he “loves a bone-in ribeye,” he realizes that it slows a person down having meat in them. He gets most of his carbs from salads, eggs, nuts, and avocados. To end the interview, Austin asked if he had any funny UFC stories. Austin told the story of wrestling in Africa, and because his diet had changed so radically, his stomach was adversely affected. When wrestling Yokozuna, he “s**t his trunks” after a body slam. Miletich then told a story about a fighter who had gotten knocked down the first round of a fight then come back to win via submission in the third round. When he came to the back, he didn’t remember who he had fought, for what promotion, that he’d won, or that he had seen Miletich in the past couple hours. He told a similar story about Matt Hughes getting at fight stopped by Joe McCarthy, a seemingly bad stoppage, until he saw Hughes who couldn’t recall anything.
Austin announced after the interview that, from now on, Wade Keller will be on the Thursday Unleashed show every week for ten to fifteen minutes to discuss the week in wrestling.
Score and Review (5/10)
Miletich is an interesting figure and shows a lot of depth and humor in this interview. The bouncer and bar fight stories is where much of the time was spent, and while the stories were interesting and funny at times, the episode itself didn’t hold anything that was “must hear.” The most interesting part of the podcast was Miletich’s discussion of the current MMA landscape and the differences between his time and now, but it doesn’t last an extremely long time. Like most of Austin’s interviews, his easy-going nature and instincts help make it at least somewhat enjoyable, but unless someone is a Miletich fans and UFC completionist much of the interview is skippable otherwise.
About Chris
Chris Gaspare is a teacher from Maryland who has been watching wrestling since 1989 when he saw his first WCW Saturday Night episode and quickly rented as many NWA and WWF VHS tapes he could find in local stores. He also attended Tri-State Wrestling Alliance and early ECW shows in Philadelphia, which really kicked his fandom into high gear. He lapsed in the mid-2000s, but returned to the wrestling fold a few years ago.
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