Jim Miller Battling Lyme Disease

Jim Miller will be stepping into the Octagon this Saturday Night when he faces #10 ranked lightweight Dustin Poirier at UFC 208.

Miller, while having fought many battles in the UFC, is fighting another battle against Lyme Disease.

“I knew I had it in me,” he said to MMA Fighting. “It was just getting things right, getting healthy again. Man, 2015 was not easy. It was the little things when you think about it. It was not so much the fights. It was just doing my daily things with my family and with the gym, it was just really difficult. And it wasn’t so much just the physical side of it. Yeah it was hard to get out of bed, it was hard to move, every time I stood up it hurt. I was like an old man, going up and down the stairs sideways. It was stupid. But mentally it was difficult to deal with. I’m just happy that I kind of got it figured out. I’m not out of the woods yet with the Lyme.”

Miller last competed against Thiago Alves at UFC 205, it was the first time Miller didn’t compete at lightweight, as the fight was catchweight bout after Alves missed weight.

Just before UFC 205, Miller went off his medications for Lyme Disease and it cost him after the fight.

“I actually had a second round of it come around, basically right before that last fight,” he said. “I was off medical for a couple weeks, like six or seven weeks, and I started to notice the early symptoms right before the fight, and I was like, alright, let’s get through it. I feel good. One of the symptoms is you get muscle spasms and stuff like that. For like three days my left eye was twitching and I was like, ahh sh*t. And because I’m self-hating, basically, I was like, let’s see how long it takes for me to feel like sh*t. And it was like three weeks, and I was like oh man, I was hurting. But I’m back on the medications.”

UFC 208 takes place on Saturday, February 11 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York with Holly Holm and Germaine De Randamie headlining.