(Video courtesy of YouTube/CagedInsider)
Most of us know that Jason Miller, who now calls Mark Munoz’s Reign Training Center home, was once a member of Team Quest, but some may be surprised to learn that from 1999 to around 2006, “Mayhem” spent most of his time in the gym training alongside the likes of Ricco Rodriguez, Tiki Ghosen, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Tito Ortiz as part of Team Punishment.
(And then there was one…)
According to Ortiz, it was during those formative years in Miller’s early career that he gave him some advice that he took and ran with.
“Miller came to me when he was [a] nobody from Atlanta, when he was 18 years old. He moved out here and I got him an apartment . He was part of Team Punishment when I first begun it,” Ortiz recalled in a recent interview with Caged Insider. “I told him, ‘Listen, you can fight all you want, but at the end of the day, people go home after a fight and they talk about you, you’ve done your job as an entertainer and as a fighter.’ He kept doing it and then he had his Monkey Mayhem followers.”
Tito recalls telling Mayhem that sometimes the entertainment value of a fighter can often overshadow the skill set said fighter possesses, pointing to a boxer many feel was the greatest of all time as an example.
“At the end of the day, we’re all great fighters, but when people forget about after they fought, you didn’t do the right things as an entertainer. If you just want to be a fighter like that, then you will be forgotten, but if you want to be an entertainer then you’ll always be remembered like Muhammad Ali,” he says. “I’m not taking no credit for anything [Jason has] done, but I will take credit that I gave him the attitude to make that difference.”