Great concerns and what-ifs bounce back and forth while he waits for his name to be called. Because of these worries, he needs padding on the walls of his brain. In the Mandalay Bay Events Center, in Las Vegas, Dan Miller stands at the aisle's entrance for his fight against Demian Maia at UFC 109 (the term used for naming the fight events). He is a mixed martial artist for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), from middle-of-nowhere Sparta, New Jersey. The middleweight fighter has trained strenuously for this day, but his nerves are getting to him…

One Sunday, before his fight, I observed Miller at the AMA Fight Club, he worked on an hour and a half-long mixed martial arts (MMA) training. He told me, "Some days I have one practice; it's a hard, MMA practice. We do ten to fifteen rounds of different [styles], and that's the only thing we'll do. Other days I'll have strength and conditioning, and I'll go straight to MMA [practice]." When I finally witnessed these ten to fifteen rounds, I felt exhausted just watching them.

The men at the gym started with some shadow boxing, an exercise where the fighter punches, kicks, knees, and elbows the air as if he or she is battling an opponent. After the guys were warmed up, they began their MMA drills. The UFC explains MMA as "an intense and evolving combat sport in which competitors use interdisciplinary forms of fighting that include jiu-jitsu, judo, karate, boxing, kickboxing, wrestling and others to their strategic and tactical advantage in a supervised match."

While I was sitting there I remembered that smell – the horrendous scent of a thousand naked, dancing feet on the mats. Every pore of the gym's floor shot sweat back into the air. It shouted, "get moving!" while you worked hard enough to not even notice the stench. But by watching these fighters, I became too mesmerized to notice the smell anymore.

At first glance, their training appeared intimidating – having little regard for each other. Pound: another guy hit the floor. Thunk: someone was punched in the gut. But at second glance, one could see that whoever said MMA was a violent sport must have missed the friendly shoulder pats between drills, meeting of gloves signifying a "good job," and the helping hands when picking another guy off the mat. Though they were training hard, they appeared to recognize the longstanding principle of respect that's present in martial arts.

Those who make claims against MMA don't always see the athletes train, nor understand the changes made in the sport. Dana White, president of the UFC, has changed the sport tremendously since Senator John McCain rallied against the sport calling it "human cockfighting." Since 2001, when White became president, McCain has publicly retracted his statement.

Now the sport is legal in many states such as Nevada, New Jersey, Florida, and recently Massachusetts; progress is now underway in New York. Opposition to MMA still believes the sport's dangerous, but reports from the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine prove otherwise. In the legal battle, the main thing MMA-enthusiasts ask for is respect for the sport. Some are pro-legalizing MMA because the sport can bring in significant revenue.

During my time at the gym, I tried to focus on Dan and his brother, Jim, who is also a UFC fighter. You can see a change in a fighter's face when he's thinking too much. Left, right, left, right, uppercut. When Dan makes a move, he appears to have a flash of empty thoughts and then lands the most beautiful collision of a fist to the chest. The next time I got to see that punch was at UFC 109…

Then it happens.

He receives his cue, and Dan takes his first step towards the Octagon, where the fights take place. Fans cheer. His steps sound like a thud at first, creating an earthquake in the crowd. But his mind is silent, calm. As Dan walks I remember him telling me, "The second I start walking out, [the nerves] just go away. I don't know what it is. I just flip a switch and I focus on the fight. All the nerves go away and I'm actually excited to go in there and fight."

When he gets to the end of the aisle, an official checks his body for any lubricants that he may have applied to make himself slippery, which would give him an illegal advantage during a fight. Next, a "cutman" applies Vaseline to Dan's cheeks and eyebrows to help prevent unnecessary cuts from elbows or punches.

Every guy is different when he gets in the Octagon. Too many people assume the fighters think about killing their opponent, but that's rarely the case. Some guys, like Jim Miller, jump up and down, get psyched up. But Dan isn't like that. He clears his mind and envisions his game plan.

Later Dan would tell me if he got himself pumped, he'd start to question himself. He'd doubt his ability, regardless that he now had a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He'd ask himself, "Why am I doing this? I'm not mad at the guy!"

Tonight, though, Dan is ready. You can see it in his face – brows down, breath's deep.

The house lights go down, and Demian Maia marches out to his fight song. When he enters the Octogon, he makes angry faces, bows respectably, then continues snarling. I suppose getting pumped up is more of his style.

While Miller and Maia are face to face in Las Vegas, Dan's wife (Kristin), mother (Carol), sister (Karen), brother-in-law (Bobby), and myself are watching the fight on pay-per-view in Sparta, New Jersey. We wait anxiously through the preliminary fights aired on Spike TV, and shift our weight often in anticipation throughout the first main fight. Finally Kristin's pointers stop barking; even they knew something incredibly important was about to happen. Whoever won this fight would be considered one of the top ten fighters in the world.

With both fighters are in the Octagon, Bruce Buffer brings his microphone to his face. "Fighting out of the blue corner," he starts, his voice stereotypical of a fight announcer, "With a record of eleven wins and two losses…" Bruce regurgitates numbers and stats, then slides to the left while holding out his right arm. He shouts, "Daaaaaannnnnnn Miiiilllleeeerrrrrrr!" After holding the "R" for just the right amount of time, he proceeds to do the same for "Damiaaaannnn Mmmaaaiiiaaaaaaa!"

The two fighters come to the center. Bruce holds his microphone to the referee, Steve Mazzagatti. The Nevada Athletic Commission licenses these referees. They need to know when there's an illegal strike (such as kicks to the groin, kicking while opponent is on the ground, or 12-to-9 elbows to the face), when a fight needs to be stopped, or when fighters need to be stood up (such as when action is stalled on the ground).

Mazzagatti asks the fighters, "Do you understand all the rules we discussed? I want a good clean fight. Touch gloves, and let's fight!"

At first Dan and Demian stay standing. Mixed martial arts is an anxiety-ridden sport because anything can happen. The beauty of the sport, however, comes from the challenge for fighters to improve in each area – using these styles as tools. Because Demian's jiu-jitsu skills are the best out there, Dan's best bet is to stay standing and break Maia apart with punches. Although the two fighters throw their fists, which are in padded black gloves, there is still a chance that Demian will find a weakness in Dan's stance and throw him to the ground.

Dan throws his first punch, looks down at his hand, then shakes it like he'd hit a brick, but keeps on fighting. During the fight I see Dan breathing and, in his mind, reiterating to himself, "stay calm." Kristin, on the other side of the country, is repeating, "Come on Dan, come on." Suddenly Demian gets Dan against the side of the Octagon and takes him down – the biggest threat he posed. But just as fast as Dan was dragged to the canvas, he is back on his feet again.

At the end of Round One, everyone turns to Bobby to ask, "Who do you think won the first round?" We make our speculations, and check with Sherdog.com, an MMA web site, to discover analysts score round one and round two as a tie. As round three begins, we're all at the edge of our seats – except for Carol and Kristen who are standing.

Dan is taking punches, but they don't appear to bother him. Demian gets Dan to the ground, but Dan defends himself well. With Dan on his back, broadcast analyst (Joe Rogan) equates Dan's chances of submitting the jiu-jitsu master to the likelihood of Damian being stuck by a meteor. With less than a minute to go in the fight, the meteor strikes. Dan throws his right leg around Maia's left arm and behind Maia's head, threatening a fight-ending triangle choke. But as the meteor strikes closer, it only grazes Maia, leaving him a survivor. "Darn it!" Kristin mutters, while standing on her bed tapping the ceiling. It's times like these when you want to hate that everything can change in a second in MMA.

The closely contested fight ends without an obvious winner. The fight will go to decision, where three judges score each of the three rounds. A fighter must win two rounds to win a judge's scorecard, and two scorecards must be won to win the fight. While Maia has won the third round, rounds one and two can go either way. When the scorecards are handed in and tallied, Maia has won at least one of the first two rounds on all three cards to earn the close decision. The air in the room goes from tense to heavy as Demian Maia's hand raises in victory.

The decision result is just one of the ways a fight can be won. While judges must rule when a fight goes the distance, the top fighters are always looking to finish the fight. A fight can be won in three ways: a knockout, or technical knock out, occurs when a fighter uses strikes until an opponent is unable to continue; a doctor's stoppage is declared when a ringside official determines a fighter is unable to fight on; a submission victory is attained by securing a submission hold, either by applying pressure to a limb or securing a chokehold, which forces the defeated fighter to tap out, preventing any serious injury from occurring.

After the fight Dan is taken to the hospital for his broken thumb; the UFC takes care of their fighters and leaves nothing to chance. In between rounds, there's a physician who makes sure the fighters are well enough to continue. On an episode of Dr. Phil, Dana White says that his fighters' safety is of his highest priority. "We're the only other sport, other than boxing, that's regulated by the athletic commissions," he says. He continues to explain that this includes drug testing, screenings, and medicals before and after their fights.

Steve Sievert, a writer for MMAJunkie.com, reports:

While promoters are permitted to provide the level of medical insurance coverage they

deem appropriate, Kizer said few secure more than the required minimum of $50,000. The

UFC is the exception. The promotion provides $100,000 of coverage for all of its events,
regardless of venue.

A broken thumb isn't going to stop Dan Miller, though. Dan told me that when he and Jim started mixed martial arts "it was something we watched, and wanted to do. [We] thought we could do it, thought we were tougher than we were…just training and fighting and just getting better." He attributed this attitude to his parents:

They never go the easy route. My dad was one of those guys who, if there was something

to be carried, he takes the most he can carry every time. We never slack. There were

always carrying contests. If you could carry 20 studs, you carry 20 studs every time. My

mom's the same way. If something needs to be done, she never complains about it. She

works hard at whatever she does.

Four days after the fight, Dan is on his way home with three pins in his thumb. He doesn’t mind, because he’s not going home alone. His son, Daniel Jr., is coming home from the hospital for the first time after six weeks in the NICU, just in time to cheer his Dad up. As soon as his cast comes off, Dan Sr. will be back in the gym, doing what he loves to support the family he loves.

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