Pat Miletich Will Receive the first George Tragos Award at The Gable Museum
By Scott Casber
The line between MMA and Wrestling gets a little thinner each day. Pat Miletich has been around the sport of wrestling since he was a kid and around MMA since its infancy. For a life spent in the training and competition of what he loves, Miletich will be the first to receive the George Tragos Award at the Dan Gable Museum and National Wrestling Hall of Fame celebration July 23rd in Waterloo, Iowa.
Patrick Jay Miletich is well known for his fights in the UFC where he became the first UFC Welterweight Champion and UFC 16 tournament champion.
He is the founder of Miletich Fighting Systems, which has trained many popular fighters in MMA, such as former UFC Welterweight Champion and Hall of Famer Matt Hughes, former UFC Heavyweight Champion Tim Sylvia, former UFC Lightweight Champion Jens Pulver, as well as former Elite XC middleweight champion Robbie Lawler.
Miletich was born in Davenport, Iowa, the youngest of 5 children to Croatian parents. Two of his brothers are deceased. Miletich wrestled and played football at Bettendorf High School. As a senior in 1986, Miletich shared the Bettendorf High School wrestling room with another future MMA champion Mark Kerr who was a freshman just beginning his wrestling career. Miletich is believed to have begun wrestling at age six. Miletich said he wanted to be a world champion in something and wrestling was something he was good at. Although Miletich originally planned to pursue football after graduating high school, he eventually chose to wrestle in junior college. Shortly thereafter, his mother became ill with heart problems, and he left school to care for her. Miletich has stated in past interviews that he actually began fighting to help pay her bills.
Miletich began providing color commentary for Strikeforce on April 11, 2009 for their debut on Showtime. He has remained providing commentary since.
Miletich was the primary subject matter of L. Jon Wertheim’s “Blood in the Cage: Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, and the Furious Rise of the UFC”, which detailed Miletich’s biography as well as his fighting camp (Miletich Fighting Systems).
[audio:http://videos.punchdrunkgamer.com/videos/PatMiletich-July-2011.mp3]
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