Cole Miller (photo via UFC.com)

By Kelsey Mowatt

Cole Miller may have scored a unanimous decision win over Andy Ogle at UFC Fight Night 30 on October 26th, but much of the post fight coverage tied to the featherweight, was regarding comments he made about other matters. Of course, Miller has never been shy about expressing his opinion since he joined the UFC seven years ago, and the 29 year-old isn’t about to stop now.

One of the reasons Miller has been in the headlines recently, is because he appealed his unanimous decision loss to Manny Gamburyan in August, with the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission. The bout’s decision was a controversial one, due to that fact that Gamburyan was given additional time between rounds one and two, after he was elbowed to the head by Miller as the time wound down.

Miller was never reprimanded or even warned that the blows were illegal, and therefore, the fight should have resumed one minute later. Instead, approximately two minutes went by as doctors consulted with Gamburyan, and then the bout continued.

As a result, Miller believes he should have been awarded a stoppage win, but the commission denied his appeal. The ATT fighter was also not happy about how the fight was scored, and Miller has been harshly critical of the judges and the MMA scoring system since.

“I can take this to the state superior court but honestly, I just think it was bulls–t,” Miller said on Full Contact Fighter Radio recently, while discussing his appeal. “You can go to my website, Coler Miller MMA.com, and you can access the letter that I wrote to the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission, and I clearly list, I think it is seven, maybe eight rules that were broken inside of a two minute period, that allowed Manny to get a two minute break.”

“The one thing I cannot even attack on this is the judges,” added Miller. “I can’t say that these judges are stupid, even though, that might be what I think, compared to the scorecards of all these miscellaneous websites…One thing I did notice is that even though the blow was not illegal, in fact it was legal, as deemed by referee Yves Lavigne, and you can look at the video.”

Gamburyan has since argued that the elbows were to the back of his head and therefore illegal, but as Miller noted, he was never informed that such a ruling had been made.

“With all that happening, the elbow was treated as if it were illegal, by the referee, by the cornerman, by the state officials as far as the timekeeper and physicians, all of these things, which gathered him sympathy,” Miller furthered while discussing the elbows, which appeared to stun Gamburyan and prompted the ringside physician to examine him. “If you go back and look at the first round there are two judges that scored him the first round.”

“If you look at the first round, he got me on the ground for I think it was not even one minute,” Miller added. “If you think about what happened, I clearly dropped him, I hit him with a blow that dropped him to the ground. I landed all the significant strikes and absorbed zero strikes in that first round, and I even him on the canvas at the buzzer. So how does that get him the first round?”

The other issue which has garnered Miller attention lately is his comments regarding rising featherweight Conor McGregor, who has captured the spotlight for his performances in and out of the Octagon. After Miller defeated Ogle on October 26th, he referred to the Irish fighter as “McGoober” and a “show pony.”

“I figured that it was going to blow up,” said Miller, when asked if he was surprised by the amount of coverage his verbal shots at McGregor received. “I was more surprised with the focus they put on me specifically versus Conor, and not so much the issues I was trying to bring up.”

“That is, you can’t come in here, and by here I mean the UFC, and talk all this crap about the top ten fighters in the world, two of which are my teammates, and you didn’t even finish a 20 year old (Max Holloway) with seven MMA fights. That was really more what I was trying to bring about. Would I like to fight Conor? Sure. But I wasn’t specifically looking to milk that fight.”

Up next, Miller will fight Sam Sicilia at UFC Fight Night 35 on January 15th, 2014. Stay tuned to Full Contact Fighter for an article featuring Miller’s thoughts on the bout.