Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse Exclusive
It’s just after 6 p.m. in an upscale steakhouse in Houston and already Jason “Mayhem” Miller is yelling at me. Maybe it’s not so much at me. More like near me. More like near everyone in the room, and people are starting to notice.
“It’s stupid, all these people who are so worried about communism if we get free health care,” Miller says, his voice rising far past what most people would consider an indoor volume. “What if the fire department made you go through the same steps as the non-socialist health care system?”
Businessmen in ties glance up from their prime rib dinners at the next table. Any thought they may have had of asking Miller to keep it down vanish when they see the source of the commotion – a rangy, cauliflower-eared 29-year-old with a nose that looks as if it’s been broken just for fun on more than one occasion, gesturing spastically as he becomes more agitated.
“Imagine, you call them up and they’re like, ‘Do you have fire insurance?’ And you’re saying, ‘Uh, my house is burning down right now.’ ‘Are you PPO or HMO? ‘The house is on fire!’ ‘What’s your policy number?’ ‘Okay, it’s, uh, 97JK39W2.’ ‘What’s your group ID?’ ‘AHHHHHH! MY HOUSE IS GONE!'”
He erupts into his trademark laugh, an almost cartoonishly maniacal cackle that suggests he might be on the verge of either torturing James Bond or simply flipping the table over on a whim. It’s the kind of laugh that makes me briefly wonder whether this whole dinner idea, where I would sit down with Miller to learn a little about what makes this enigmatic fighter tick, was really such a brilliant notion.