What's up everyone?
Welcome back to the All Things Croatia podcast.
We were super lucky today.
We've got an awesome guest.
We've got Pat, the Croatian sensation, Miletich here.
He's an ex MMA fighter, UFC champion.
He's in the UFC Hall of Fame, became a very successful coach and trainer after that.
And we're going to hear from him today.
Pat, thanks for coming on the podcast.
No problem.
Thank you.
Yeah, I appreciate it, man.
You know, first of all, if you could start us off, can you tell us a little bit about
your Croatian background and what you know about that?
Yeah, my family, the Milicic family is from west of Zagreb, kind of a back then coal mining
and farming region of Croatia.
My great grandparents that came here, when they got to Ellis Island, basically, you know,
back in those days, they would ask people what they did for a living, you know, in their
country of origin, and then they would try to send them to areas of the United States
that made sense for their, you know, their knowledge, their occupational skills, things
like that.
So they were sent to southern Iowa, where coal mining and farming was really big.
And that's kind of how how the Milicic has got, at least that group of Milicic has ended
up in southern Iowa.
Different times back then, I guess, where they sort of send you where they want you
to go, as opposed to where you were going to be most prosperous, right?
They wanted people to have good lives and contribute to society.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
How much of that sort of, you know, Croatian heritage?
Did you ever hear the language growing up?
Were you, I mean, surrounded by any of the culture at all?
Things like that.
How much were you surrounded by it?
I was what was interesting, though, and it was, you know, my my father really never taught
us any Croatian.
He knew how to speak Croatian.
But I believe he didn't teach us because he and his brother, Jerry, I think back in the
day, because they were Croatian immigrants in southern Iowa, they got in a few fights
back then because they were immigrants or or from immigrant, you know, families and
everybody spoke Croatian back then, and they got they got some fistfights, to say the least.
And so I think that they just I don't know, for whatever reason, speaking English was
easier or however that worked.
But but definitely at family reunions, I would hear my great uncles and them speaking Croatian
a lot.
And, you know, the family reunions were always, you know, it was cool.
It was cool because you were immersed back in like real Croatian, the heritage and the
just the mindset, the immigrant mentality, the immigrant work ethic, you know, all those
things.
That's right.
Yeah.
You just said immigrant mentality.
That made me think of Stipe Miltic, because I know his name around a lot.
When I hear that phrase, I forget who first.
What's the name?
Joey Diaz or someone's whoever coined that phrase and started talking about Stipe on
the Joe Rogan.
That's yeah, that's something that that's something that I've talked about, you know,
for many, many years, because just that, you know, you got to do the work, you got to outwork
everybody.
Right.
And that's why we, you know, when you look at the UFC, you look at a lot of guys who
were not born in the United States, who are doing quite well winning titles, all that
sort of stuff, because they they know, you know, how rough life can be in certain places,
you know.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You've got that extra edge, you know.
Sure.
Yeah, definitely.
But, you know, I want to let's get into the fighting a little bit.
You came obviously before Stipe before even, you know, Mirko Krokop, another famous, you
know, Croatian fighter.
And you're sort of people, you know, say that you might be one of the first sort of true
mixed martial artists as far as, you know, combating with all styles and not just fighting
with one sort of style.
How did you get started, you know, from a young age fighting or is that something you
took on later?
Well, I grew up obviously wrestling in Iowa.
And so that wrestling from age five, I mean, it's two hours of what most would consider
a street fight.
You know, you're you're in Bettendorf, Iowa, where I grew up.
You know, it was it was a powerhouse for wrestling, even in the state of Iowa.
You know, we were always a powerhouse.
So the second and third string guys on our wrestling teams could generally go win tournaments
everywhere else, you know, and that's just the way it was.
And so that work ethic, that mentality of always winning, we didn't talk about it if
we were going to win.
We were, you know, starting kiddies in the locker room, throwing in a couple bucks to
see who would get the fastest pin or the most takedowns or whatever.
That was our mentality, you know, in that community, certainly.
But when I went to college, my mom got sick with heart problems, left school to help to
pay her bills, working three jobs.
And then totally by chance, one of my foremen, a finisher on my concrete crew was a black
belt in karate and said he could he could whip a wrestler any day because he was a black
belt.
And I said, hey, I said, you're from Kentucky.
Have you ever had a guy from Iowa grab a hold of you?
And he's like, no, he goes.
But at lunchtime, we go check it out.
We go see.
And so we went out in the field and I threw him around a little bit.
And he gave me a free week pass to his kickboxing and karate gym.
And I went to free lessons that week.
And I thought it was a complete joke until Friday.
I went and watched the black belt sparring and they were going hard.
I mean, they were they could bang.
They were going hard.
And I went, OK, this is what I'm signing up for.
So that's how I got started in it.
And then really kickboxing, one of us title in kickboxing and then mixed martial arts
came along, obviously, and my wrestling background and had been doing some judo and some other
stuff on top of the kickboxing and Muay Thai and karate.
And I went, holy cow, my my sport has literally just been invented.
So well, yeah, that's sort of I was thinking as he told that story.
I mean, that's pretty much how the UFC came to be.
You know, my style is better than your style.
Yeah.
And you know, what's cool is my great uncle, Johnny Militich, he changed his name to Myler
for his ring name because he didn't want his mother to know that he was boxing.
Right.
So back in the day, his late 20s, early 30s, all of that stuff, he had left Albia, Iowa,
gone to Detroit to work in the Ford Motor Company factory up there.
And then the depression hit.
And so he went back to boxing.
And he as amateurs, he knocked Joe Lewis down seven times in three rounds.
He won that fight pretty easily.
People don't know about that.
But my uncle, Johnny Mylar Militich, made the 32 Olympic boxing team.
He fought Maxie Rosenblum twice for the world title, light heavyweight world title, had
a drawn a split decision loss in those fights.
And both times the crowds rioted because my uncle beat the shit out of it.
And you know, back then the mob ran boxing, that's just the way it was.
So Maxie was, I think, a product and protected to a certain extent.
But yeah, so the the combat mentality was definitely I think it runs through Croatian
blood anyway, but you know.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And war.
And back then, the catches catch can wrestling was big, which he used to go to carnivals.
You know, the farmer burns, the gotchas, all those guys, the early leader, runs back in
those days.
So my uncle would go to carnivals and state fairs.
And when the when the carnival strongman would do their feats of strength, they'd always
after they do that challenge anyone in the crowd to get in either the boxing ring with
them or get in and do a catches catch can wrestling match with them.
And my uncle would go and beat up carnival strongman to hone his skills.
He would he would do that stuff.
So so that was really the mixed martial artist.
He was already a mixed martial artist back in the, you know, 20s and 30s.
Wow.
Yeah.
So it was like an old school training.
Cool history, right?
Cool history.
I mean, those guys were and back in those days, when you look at I collect old books,
the how tos, like catches, catch, can wrestling books and stuff like that.
Those guys look like they're on a list of steroids as long as your leg, because we still
had a lot of nutrients left in our soil.
So the factory farming has destroyed our soil so badly that we're not we're not as blessed
with testosterone, we're not as blessed with strength, tendon strength, explosiveness,
all those things, unless we're specifically looking for those concentrated organic nutrients
that allow our body to, you know, get a lot stronger in those ways.
So that's, that's, it's a huge difference when you look at the people back then naturally
were just very, very powerful people.
Yeah, that's an interesting point.
I want I heard you tell this story on another podcast.
I think it was with Croatian sports calm way back in the day.
And you know, about your nickname, the Croatian sensation, I was wondering if you could sort
of tell that again, how you how you got that nickname.
Yeah, so there was a guy that played football for my dad, my dad was a college football
coach, among other things.
And that they put the white athletic tape on the front of your helmet, and write your
name in a black marker, you know, so the coaches would learn everybody's names and excuse me,
his his last name was birch.
And so he got his bell rung.
He was playing fullback, I believe at the time or linebacker, I can't remember.
And got his bell rung and was laying on his back.
My dad walked up and stood over him and said, birch, are you Croatian?
And he said, Yeah, he goes, then get the hell up.
And he called him the Croatian sensation.
My dad called him that.
And then when he was a sports broadcaster, then he dubbed me the Croatian sensation after
that.
So that's awesome.
I love that story.
And you stuck with your whole fighting career?
Yes, yes, it stuck with me.
Yes, most definitely.
And birch birch was a guy that was a really good college football player, but he also
became he did some boxing as well while he was a sports broadcaster.
And he and I used to spar with each other.
He was pretty hard on his guy.
I want to ask him about the early days.
I mean, you fought in the early days of the UFC really.
What sort of difference do you see between those days when you were fighting and nowadays?
As far as your talent?
I mean, basically, well, I think I think that there's always been while there's always been
talented people in the sport, you know, you're going to get your Olympics, you know, your
Olympic silver medalist, gold medalist, stuff like that, which existed back when I was fighting.
But I think it's, you know, obviously, people have a lot a lot bigger purses.
You're going to get a bigger pool of athletes, generally, things like that.
It's been I think fighters do it more for the money now than the back when I was fighting,
we did it for the passion, you know, the passion, the martial arts kind of mentality, so to
speak.
And, you know, we were kind of on a mission to make the sport a mainstream sport.
We were doing debates with politicians on TV, I'll training for our fights, you know,
trying to keep it legal, you know, so the fight was more than just getting ready for
a fight, obviously.
Do you find that there's any difference between like the stereotype around it or sort of how
fans were back in those days versus, you know, today, now that it's mainstream?
Well, I mean, we obviously weren't accepted in the mainstream early on, you know, the
politicians and the athletic commissions, not getting their cut of the money was the
problem, right.
And so they vilified us for those reasons.
And, you know, until they could bring people, you know, basically figure out sanctioning
all those sort of things, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But in all debates, it always came down to when the politicians were saying they were
concerned about the safety of the athletes.
I would just simply say they're not concerned with the safety of the athletes.
That's not even remotely their concern, because they wouldn't allow Little League baseball
to take place in their state, which has seven deaths a year from kids getting hit with line
drives or auto racing where even spectators die, you know, on down the list.
You know, boxers, I think roughly 40 boxers die worldwide a year.
So you know, that's not even counting the, you know, pretty severe injuries that take
place.
So when I would say that, that it would basically have to admit that, yes, it does come down
to the money.
And that's what they're after, you know, all that sort of stuff.
So it was it was pretty easy debating people who were not prepared to debate somebody that
knew the statistics and things like that.
That's interesting.
I want to throw sort of a fun question at you here.
What was your entrance song back in the day?
If you had to fight again today, would you change into a different song or would it be
the same one?
I came out to a couple of different ones, to be honest with you.
ACDC, I used to come out to Rob Zombie, Super Beast, you know, a couple of other ones, Metallica,
stuff like that.
So but, you know, the funny thing is, is I actually that's kind of crazy.
I was I've been I've been getting my body kind of back in shape right now, kind of focusing.
And it's coming back a lot faster than I thought it would.
And I know that it sounds kind of crazy.
But I mean, in my mid 50s, I actually feel really good.
I don't have any aches and pains for the most part.
I can still go out and run 10 miles.
You know, I can get that done.
Not a problem.
So I might actually be fighting Mike Jackson in October in Davenport, Iowa.
He's the guy that wrote the article, the lies, the article.
He's a very left leaning individual who wrote lies about me being in Washington, DC on January
6th and said that I supported white supremacy and domestic terrorism.
And I lost my broadcasting job because of it.
So he wrote straight out lies.
And so he actually, at least verbally, has agreed to do a mixed martial arts fight against
me in the cage regression event in October, which we do the live pay per views for that.
I started a internet pay per view company to do that.
So he's he has, I don't know, volunteered to dedicate, you know, donate his body to
science, I guess, and going to going to take one for the team, you know, let his ego get
involved.
So, yeah, I'm going to do it probably one more time, it sounds like and go out and beat
up a 30 some year old youngster who's a UFC veteran and kind of teach him a lesson about
life about, you know, attempting to ruin people's lives with lies is not always going to pay
off for you.
Wow, that's I mean, it's cool that you're able to go to the ring then with him and sort
of hash that.
Yeah, you know, I'm doing this for all the people that had to decide between feeding
their families and keeping their houses and, you know, an experimental medical treatment,
right?
That's cost that's costing people, you know, their health right now.
We know that for a fact.
And you know, I'm doing it for all the military people who decided to walk away or stay to
feed their families based on the mandatory, you know, stuff that was going on.
I'm doing it for all the medical professionals that stood their ground on it, you know, all
those people I'm doing it for people who believe in the truth, right?
If we ultimately believe in the in the First Amendment, we believe in the truth, no matter
how uncomfortable the truth is.
We have to accept the truth and we have to search for the truth continually within ourselves
and in society in general.
And you know, taking the right of people the the autonomy of their own bodies and ripping
that out from underneath them.
There is no more frontiers of freedom left, right?
At that point.
So that's why that's why I'm doing this.
I have no reason to get into a cage and have a fight with another gentleman except for
something that's this important to me.
So yeah, bigger than than just yourself and looking back in.
Right.
Yeah.
Sort of going back to I mean, after after you retired, you know, you got into color
commentary.
You sort of mentioned that.
But you also became a coach and trainer and you started the militant fighting systems,
which was, you know, sort of a training school for mixed martial arts, which was extremely
successful.
And I was wondering, can you attribute that to any particular thing or is it just sort
of a combination of everything that you were doing?
Well, you know, because I had done a lot of different types of martial arts, I had boxed,
I had wrestled my whole life, all those different things and the components.
One thing that I recognized is that many times, just like religion or something else, a belief
in life, people were going into the cage with their with their one specific discipline or
a very limited spectrum of disciplines and depending on one thing and kind of wearing
that like a religion almost.
Right.
And their egos were what was causing that.
And so for me, I recognized that I don't think I had to admit to myself that I wasn't good
enough at any one thing to beat people with just that one thing.
I needed to be well versed and be able to hang with the best Brazilian traditional black
belts in the world in their world, hang with the best boxers in the world and just sparring
with with some of the world's best boxers training with the world's best movies, I kick
boxers and all those different areas and disciplines where if I could hang with them and stay fairly
competitive in those worlds, all of them independently, that I would be able to put all those tools
together and be able to find a weakness in somebody else's game, be able to exploit that
and beat them.
And that was the mentality.
And that's kind of the mentality that I instilled.
And, you know, a lot of the fighters that I trained, obviously, and we win a good run.
We had 95 athletes put into televised careers, 12 world champions, two team world championships
in the IFL.
So, you know, I kind of reached all my goals as a coach.
I was coaching a lot when I was fighting as well, kind of like Paul Newman and Slapshot,
so to speak.
Have you ever seen Slapshot?
Actually, I haven't.
No, my dad talks about it.
I never saw it.
You go go go watch Slapshot.
It's a hilarious movie.
It's a great movie.
It's a classic.
But I was kind of like the playing coach.
Paul Newman was playing on the team still while he was coaching.
And so that's kind of how I felt.
Okay, but you stopped coaching in what, OE or somewhere around there?
Yeah, somewhere around there.
Somewhere around there.
And I still I still do law enforcement and military trainings, you know, where it's not
it's not a submission type situation, things like that.
It's the fundamentals of movement.
We focus on the head, the hands and the hips.
Really simplifying things for law enforcement officers who don't get a lot of time to train
for, you know, combat soldiers and worked with, you know, a lot of different groups
in the military as well.
Just helping them dealing with keeping their weapon, for instance, getting back up off
the ground after they've been knocked down, you know, and getting up intelligently, being
able to deal with multiple attackers, you know, a lot of that sort of stuff as well.
And you know, so I've gotten, you know, I get a lot of enjoyment out of helping those
folks.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I'll ask you this just because my dad was wondering the other day about a crop McGough.
You have any any thoughts on that?
Because it sounds somewhat similar to sort of what you're training sort of real life
self-defense type of I mean, obviously with being a police officer or in the military,
sort of a different aspect of that.
Yeah, I think with anything, you know, I think conceptually, conceptually, crop McGough makes
sense, you know, it's a combative art that deals with, you know, a spectrum of things,
whether armed or unarmed, whatever, always is going to come down to the the people that
are teaching and the practitioners.
You know, I've seen a lot of mixed martial arts gyms where it's just a lobotomy of just
horrible technique.
So I'm a big I'm really a stickler on fundamentals, technique, mechanics, all of those sorts of
things and why we do certain things the way we do them.
You know, so I think if the instructor is good fundamentals and mechanics and knowledge
and actual history, you know, dealing with real world situations, it makes sense.
You know, that's that's where people need to really pay attention because you can walk
in somewhere and somebody can tell you they're a nine time world champion or whatever and
just completely lead you down the wrong path.
If you go somewhere to learn how to box or do kickboxing, if the first thing they teach
you is how to punch, leave because that's not what it's about.
It's about footwork, head movement, defensive skills, all of those sort of things.
And if I learn to or I teach someone how to move correctly and once they learn how to
move correctly, mechanically correct, then they're going to be correct and based off
of, you know, those the footwork and the head movement and all those sort of things.
So it's like today I was working with a kid who was brand new and we spent 45 minutes
working on footwork and head movement, you know, just teaching him the fundamentals of
how to move correctly so that when I did get to a jab and a cross, it was super easy for
him.
He understood the mechanics.
That's sort of from the ground up type of deal.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's 99 percent of human beings.
Well, when we look at it, you know, humans are the only animal born on this planet with
no self-defense instinct born into them, right?
So if they're not taught, they're helpless.
So we have to teach people how to move first and then we go from there.
That's a good point.
I like that.
Pat, you know, I sort of asked about everything that you've been doing, but I want to ask,
you know, what are what sort of projects are you involved with now?
Either in the fighting or outside of it.
Just over the years, I've learned about some supplementation and things a little bit different
than most people, their path, I guess.
So I started a product with my partner, Tim James, a chemical free body.
It's a product called Super Soldier.
So it's very high grade antioxidants that, you know, when we put antioxidants into our
body, we're looking to raise oxygen levels in the cells.
We're looking to remove heavy metals and synthetic chemicals that are affecting the
immune system.
And overall athletic performance and endurance and recovery and aiding in the mitochondria,
you know, being able to function correctly and cell function.
So most of the products that you're going to get off store shelves at any, you know,
any store or any supplement company store are generally going to be produced with a
lot of fillers, a lot of chemicals, a lot of garbage that don't move the needle.
And so if you really, really want to become, you know, more healthy, obviously, but a higher
level athlete, you're never going to do it with stuff that just comes from, you know,
laboratories.
It's just not going to happen.
Where can people, you know, find out more about this or, you know, contact you?
They can go to chemicalfreebody.com and the product is called Super Soldier.
And if they use promo code SOS, they can save 5% off the product as well.
And the SOS stands for kind of Americans' health right now overall, sending out an SOS
to everybody.
You know, because when we look at Americans in general, the obesity, the deformities,
the mental illness, you know, all the stuff that's happening generally can be contributed
to, you know, the chemicals and heavy metals in our environment, however they get there.
So we have to be able to remove those from our body to be able to, you know, sustain
health.
Mm hmm.
I mean, that's one thing they say here about Europe is that, you know, the food is so much
healthier than that in the US.
Well, that's the thing.
Yeah.
And I tell this story all the time.
Fighters would come from all over the world and they'd go to our grocery stores in the
town I grew up in.
They would come back to the gym that night and go, now we know why Americans are all
disease-ridden and obese, you guys are being poisoned.
And it's a lot different here.
And so you have to at some point go, is this by design?
It's been going on 40, 45 years, right?
So where are these chemicals in farming, chemicals in our food, all these sort of things are
not even legal in places like Europe.
Why are they being thrown all over our soil and our crops, you know, nationwide here?
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
Just what you mentioned, high fructose corn syrup.
I know that's not legal here in Europe or at least most parts in Europe.
And it's in like every, every food imaginable in the US.
Yeah.
Well, Pat, I got just a few more quick questions for you.
One, actually, I forgot to ask this earlier on, but I know you've got a tattoo of the
Croatian gooder, you know, the symbol on your arm.
I couldn't tell if it was the left or right.
I saw a couple pictures, I guess.
Yes, the crest on my left shoulder.
Okay.
When did you get that?
I couldn't even tell you many years ago.
Yeah, a long time ago.
It's awesome.
It's a super sick tattoo.
I love that.
And then just last two questions here.
One piece of advice that you would give to sort of young adults?
You know, that's yeah, do your research on what food you're putting in your body.
Find good purification system for your water, certainly in America, and be your own doctor.
Educate yourself so that you're not dependent on the system, because the system is one of
synthetic chemicals causing illness.
And then you go to a guy in a white lab coat and he writes you a prescription for more
synthetic chemicals.
So free yourself from the system, be your own doctor, and take care of yourself so that
you're not one of these folks walking around in public who can barely walk or have to use
a hover around or whatever, you know, ended up mentally or physically deformed and ill
because they didn't know any better.
Well, Pat, you know, I want to thank you again for coming on the podcast.
I just have one last thing that I have been asking, you know, all the guests who come
on.
And that's just for you.
What makes Croatia or Croatians special?
I think throughout their history, it's just been a, you know, a unique, tiny country that
has been able to do things like stop the Ottoman Empire in 15, what, 97 in Sysyk.
You know, a tiny country that was the only country on the planet that could yield a basketball
team that could hang with the, you know, NBA All Stars in the Olympics, the dream team,
so to speak.
You know, just Croatian blood.
There's something special about it.
Awesome.
Pat, thank you again for coming here on the podcast.
It's been a pleasure hearing from you.
All right.
Thank you.