Midnight Mania! Pat Miletich Returns?!?

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Welcome to Midnight Mania!

Pat Miletich is a legend. Alongside Frank Shamrock, Miletich is credited as one of the first to really put it all together: Miletich could wrestle, strike, and submit opponents. In UFC’s “Dark Era” of the late ‘90s, Miletich captured the Welterweight title and defended it four times. His activity slowed after losing the belt, at which point he became the head coach of Miletich Fighting Systems (MFS), which almost instantly produced multiple UFC champions.

A Hall of Fame inductee in 2014, Miletich retired back in 2008 on a victory, focusing on coaching and later commentary. However, longtime MMA promoter, manager, and friend of the MFS crew in its heyday, Monte Cox, revealed on Bruce Buffer’s podcast that Miletich is going to return after all these years for a kickboxing match with former IBF middleweight champion Michael Nunn.

“(There’s) one big show I’m working on,” Cox said (transcription via MMAJunkie). “You’ve probably heard rumors of this, but Pat Miletich is going to fight again. He’s fighting Michael Nunn, a great boxer. It’s an incredible (fight). This thing will draw. We could draw 7,000-plus in the Quad Cities. They are the two greatest professional athletes or fighters out of that area.”

While Miletich has been retired for over a decade, Nunn has been sidelined in prison since 2004. “Michael has been in prison,” Cox explained. “He just got out six months ago. It was a cocaine thing. The feds set him up to buy a kilo of cocaine for 100 bucks. It’s just ridiculous. … It was entrapment at its best. But anyway, what he did when he went to prison was he took all the people who came in overweight and didn’t know about nutrition. (He) taught them how to get back in shape, eat right, and put them through workouts and stuff. He really did good.”

“He’s a good guy. I know him really well. I traveled with him all over the world when he was fighting. At one time, he was pound-for-pound the best boxer in the world at 35-0. He was untouchable.”

Nunn’s final win in the ring came back in 2002, bringing his professional record to 58-4. Nunn is five years Miletich’s elder at 57 years of age. Questions of morality aside, it’s at least a mildly interesting thought experiment: who wins in a kickboxing match between a former UFC champion and a former boxing champion … in their 50s?

At any rate, Cox plans to promote the event once the COVID-19 pandemic settles down and public events become viable once more. Maybe Nunn will be 60 by then!

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Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.