HKL Exclusive with Mark "Fight Shark" Miller Part 1: Early Career and Heart Surgery

I consider myself fortunate to call Mark Miller my friend. Prior to taking over this site in December, I had never had any contact with the man, but in a short amount of time he's become someone that I can consider a major influence and motivator in my life. This weekend he makes his return to the sport of kick boxing, a sport that he was forced to walk way from in 2006 because of a pre-existing heart condition. Now stronger than ever and a new outlook on training, he will be entering the ring at United Glory this Saturday in Russia. He'll be carrying with him not just the pride of American kickboxing but the pride in himself for overcoming such adversity. This is part one of a multi part series from an interview we had two weeks ago. I hope you enjoy.

Matt: Just because there are a bunch of new kickboxing fans who don’t know who you are, can you give some background on who you are and why your return is so important?

Mark: I don’t know why my return is so important. Everyone else keeps telling me that, I just want to fight. I was one of the American hopefuls in the late 90s/early 2000s in the pre-Bob Sapp freak show era in K-1. I was just a young American kick boxer trying to make it big in the world of K-1 which at the time was a lot bigger than, this is pre-Zuffa UFC, the UFC wasn’t even on Pay Per View because of all the infamous John McCain stuff. K-1 tried to make a move at that time into the US. First in ‘98 and then again in 2000. In ’98 with Art Davie and then in 2000 with Scott Coker.

So I was training with Maurice Smith and Maurice Smith got to fight for K-1 in Japan so when they tried making the move into America, they tried to latch me onto that. So all I was was a fighter trying to make it. I was always a huge Muay Thai and kick boxing fan and had been doing it since I was a young age. So I was just trying to be the best in the sport, in a sport that didn’t have an American presence. Lets be honest, it still doesn’t. So hopefully Americans see with the growing popularity of MMA due to the UFC, they’ll try and do something on the global scale and I can be the first person to try and start that fire again.

Matt: There really haven’t been Americans that have transitioned to kick boxing, they usually go to MMA or even regular boxing. Why do you think that kick boxing has been the "red headed step child" of combat sports in America?

Mark: I think because, let’s be honest, it’s a hard sport. I’ve done all three professionally: boxing, kick boxing, and MMA, and it’s the hardest, most physically challenging of the three and probably the least monetarily satisfying. Obviously, if you are fighting in K-1 or one of the big shows in Europe, you’re going to do well but to get there takes a lot. What you make on a kick boxing show here is less than what you’re gonna make at a small MMA show or a small boxing show. It really hasn’t had, you know like how the Ultimate Fighter and the way that the UFC has marketed their brand, they’ve done a very good job, the young guys are attracted to it. Boxing is still seen as an inner city hard sport. There aren’t a lot of available, good quality boxing gyms outside of a lot of inner city gyms. Let’s be honest, the amount of kick boxing gyms, that’s another thing, there aren’t a lot of them. There’s MMA gyms everywhere now. Granted, it’s been in the last four or five years but compared to boxing or kick boxing, it’s not even a contest. I just don’t think the sport has enough of a face to really attract people. As beautiful as it is to watch and as exciting as it is to watch, there’s not a lot of people that see it. I show so many UFC fans K-1 fights or Muay Thai fights and they say "that’s awesome! That’s so exciting! I’ve never seen it." And you think "wow". That’s the truth. Think about how much MMA you see now. There’s about a dozen magazines for sale in Barnes & Noble and if you turn on a TV everyday you can find something somewhere. Years ago it was no where to be found. Pre-Ultimate Fighter, there weren’t many magazines and there wasn’t much MMA on TV. They’ve done a very good job at getting it out there.

Matt: You were pretty much on the brink of becoming the American face, I believe Dave Walsh wrote on Liverkick.com that Ishii considered you to be the "Great American Hope", did you feel that from K-1? That you were going to be pushed as the American star...

Mark: If everything worked out...you always have to take what the Japanese say with a grain of salt. That conversation took place in the deep bowels of the of the Hard Rock Casino. We sat and had that conversation. That’s what Ishii was looking for and it was around the time that he was getting into all that trouble in Japan and that changed a lot. People don’t understand how much that changed the face of K-1. All the tax evasions and convictions, that changed the sport. I don’t know if it would have been different if he would have stayed or if things would have gone differently. Losing a decision to Dewey Cooper three months later also didn’t help. That kind of really threw me for a loop mentally. I let it get to me. It was one of those deals where you go in knowing if you win this fight, this is going to happen and then when you blow it, it’s like "f**k!" I was younger and just didn’t mentally handle it that well. I was so disappointed in myself for losing a fight that I should have won if I had just followed the game plan that my trainers had set up and I didn’t do it.

Matt: The big story with you is that you’re coming back from the Aortic Valve Replacement surgery, how did you find out that you needed to have that surgery done?

Mark: It’s a problem that I was always aware of my whole life. But the reason that it got caught was that I was going to fight for S-1 out of Thailand and they were going to do their first show in the United States and they decided to do the show in Miami. So of course in order to fight in Miami, I had to get licensed by the Florida Athletic Commission. So I did the tests that I had to go through and one of them was an EKG and my EKG was off. They knew I had a pre-existing condition and said I should see a cardiologist. So I made the appointment and they decided to do an echocardiogram.

I was back in Pittsburgh at the time and I went to go see an orthopedic surgeon because I was having problems with my back after back surgery a couple years earlier and he told me I needed to take some time off. I was shaking his hand agreeing with him while knowing in the back of my mind that I needed to get ready for this fight. So as I’m leaving his office, my phone rings and it’s a nurse from the cardiologist’s office and she said they needed to see me in the office in the morning. I may not be the brightest guy but when a nurse tells you that, it’s never a good thing. So I went in to see him and he told me they didn’t understand how I was even walking around because I had 20 percent cardiac output and that I needed surgery.

At first I didn’t want to hear it, so I requested a second opinion and went to go see some specialists at the University of Pittsburgh and they put me through a gauntlet including an esophageal cardiogram, which is the best one you can get where they shove the camera down your throat. When I had that, it was an even worst prognosis than the other one. They said I had fifteen percent cardiac output and that my heart was enlarged, I needed surgery immediately. They told me my career was over.

I decided to not listen to them and went to have a training camp in Austin, Texas, to get ready for the fight. It was at that point where the doctors though I was crazy. I was a couple of days into training, I hit pads for one round, the bell rings and my training partner said "we’re done." I said "what do you mean we’re done? It’s been one round." He said "no, you’re turning blue, I’m not gonna hold pads for you." I went to the locker room and saw I was a weird shade and decided that maybe I should talk to my doctor. I spoke to the cardiologist who said "I think I have an out for you, there’s a kind of surgery we can possible do that you may be able to come back and fight. But you’re going to have to fit certain criteria." Due to the physical condition I was in, I was able to get the surgery.