Even though he’s made the UFC walk nearly 50 times, Jim Miller still struggles with something that may come as a surprise.
Sometimes, the 41-year-old lightweight said, he doesn’t think he should be making the kinds of demands about his fighting career that get made by scores of other fighters with far less experience, cache and tenure than him. He doesn’t even really like to make callouts, let alone tell the UFC brass he demands X, Y or Z before he’ll fight.
“I still feel like I deal with a little bit of imposter syndrome,” Miller told MMA Junkie Radio. “It’s hard for me to even say that stuff. My job is to fight, and that’s what I do. I’m not a matchmaker. I’m not any of that stuff. I’m a fighter, so that’s what I focus my time on.”
But impostor syndrome? Really? Miller (38-18 MMA, 27-17 UFC) is the UFC record-holder for fights with 45 and wins with 27 and is the only fighter to have fought at UFC 100, UFC 200 and UFC 300, the latter of which came earlier this year. He has 15 post-fight bonuses holds a ton of lightweight records.
So what the …?
But for Miller, it’s a real thing. It might help that he manages his own career and does all his own negotiating – a complete throwback fighter who has a throwback mentality outside the cage, too? It’s about perfect. He acknowledges, though, that he’s earned some bona fides, even if he doesn’t use those to make big requests.
“It’s hard, for me at least, to make some of those calls,” Miller said. “I know that I am well-respected and I appreciate the hell out of that, and some of the conversations that I have with guys like Sean Shelby or (Joe) Rogan, I do feel that I’ve earned their respect. I notice how they talk to other fighters and it’s not like it’s demeaning in any way – it’s just that they talk to me a lot more in that peer realm, I feel like. Maybe I’m kidding myself. I don’t know when it started to happen, but I do notice the respect and the appreciation and I do love it – it’s a huge driving force for me.”
Just don’t expect him to try to use that to cash in with other things – even if it’s as simple as not wanting to book fights at the UFC Apex and instead be on upper-shelf pay-per-views. It’d be hard for anyone to deny a request like that from someone with the resume Miller brings to the table.
Despite that, he said it’s still not in his personality to go that route.
“I still have difficulty making those callouts, like saying, ‘Hey, no more Apex cards for me. Jim always wants the big cards – only numbered events at this point.’ That’s a tough one for me.”
Miller fought three times in the 2024 calendar year, up a fight from the two a year he had in 2023, 2022 and 2021.
In 44 UFC fights, he has been on numbered pay-per-view cards half the time. He’s gone 15-6 in 22 pay-per-view appearances with a no contest.
