When Jim Miller steps into the Octagon this Saturday night to face Nate Diaz, the winner will insert his name at the top of the pecking order.
Lightweight is deep, so a win may not guarantee a title shot, but it’s just that level of intense competition that brings out the best in fighters.
Jim Miller will be that fighter. Here’s why.
Jim is 10-2 in the UFC, with losses only to the current champion, Ben Henderson, and top contender, Gray Maynard. He lost both of those fights because he couldn’t out-grapple his opponents.
Jim is a solid striker, but it’s not his strong suit. Getting out-struck by Maynard (perhaps the finest wrestler in the division), Jim simply had no other options. He couldn’t get the fight to the mat, so he had to settle for a kickboxing match where he just wasn’t up to snuff.
Against Henderson, he got out-struck and out-grappled. What seemed from the sidelines as desperation, Jim dropped for several high-risk/low-yield submission attempts (guillotines and Kimuras) against a guy who is known for being excellent at defending submissions.
It was not the greatest of strategies. And he lost.
Against Diaz, Miller will have the wrestling advantage, and that will be the difference in the fight.
Nate has a bit of a takedown issue. In four of his five UFC losses, he was taken down by strong wrestlers with good enough jiu-jitsu skills to avoid being tapped out.
Clay Guida, Joe Stevenson, Dong-Hyun Kim and Rory MacDonald all ran a wrestling clinic on Nate Diaz and scored decision wins.
Jim Miller is a very good wrestler, and a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt…the exact formula that gives Nate nightmares.
It’s not even going to matter that Nate has adopted his brother Nick’s high volume striking attack, with great success.
He did it against guys like Marcus Davis, Takanori Gomi and Donald Cerrone, who were all content to stand in front of Nate and take the beating his excellent striking skills had no problem administering.
Jim Miller will not do that.
Once Nate starts getting the better of him on the feet, which with a four-inch height advantage and a five-inch reach advantage, in addition to just being a better striker should be pretty early on in the fight, Jim is going to make it a grappling match, and he will win that one nine times out of ten.
Nate is certainly no slouch on the ground. He was recently awarded his own black belt by Cesar Gracie, and boasts 10 submission victories to his credit. But Nate lacks the takedown ability to bring the fight to the ground.
He gets taken to the ground, and against Miller, he’ll get taken to the ground by someone he will have a very difficult time catching in a triangle.
Nate is a great fighter, an exciting fighter. He’s won eight Fight Night bonuses. But there’s a reason why in 2010 he departed the lightweight division, then departed the welterweight division back to the lightweight division a year later: he can’t wrestle, and wrestling is the great equalizer in MMA.
Nate has done a great job thriving even with such a glaring weakness, but at the top level, that weakness continues to get exposed.
Jim Miller will win this fight on Saturday night, and even though he may not earn a title shot, he’ll put himself right back at the top of the heap.
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