Cole Miller (photo via UFC.com)

By Kelsey Mowatt

Cole Miller will take on Alex Caceres at UFC 199, and the rugged vet is understandably hoping for a vastly different outcome, than what unfolded in his last bout.

When Miller steps into the cage to face Caceres on Jue 4th, it will mark the first time he’s fought since December, when his bout with Jim Alers was declared a no-contest. In round two of the UFC on FOX 17 fight, Miller received an accidental poke to the eye, and was unable to continue as a result. As if that wasn’t bad enough, as per the norm in these cases,  a few fans took the opportunity to accuse Miller of bowing out of the fight.

“I saw three or four of those, and then I saw, I mean, countless amounts of people saying ‘oh my God’, look at what happened to your eye,” Miller relayed on a recent episode of Full Contact Fighter Radio, while discussing fan reaction to his painful looking injury. “Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve fought with blood pouring into my eye. Just one fight before that, I fought with blood flowing into my eye, with a skin flap hanging out off my eye brow, into my eye…”

Miller is referring to his bout with featherweight contender Max Holloway last February, which saw the latter win the bout via unanimous decision. The bout was unquestionably impacted by an accidental headbutt “Magrinho” received in round two, which opened Miller up, and another clash of heads that followed.

“When that eye poke happened, my first reaction was ‘okay’, stay calm, try to open your eye,” added Miller, who required medical treatment for the eye poke and was sidelined for a couple of months as a result. “Then when my eyeball wouldn’t open, it wasn’t like ‘oh, you couldn’t see,’ or it’s kind of blurry, I couldn’t even open my eye to see if I could see. I actually felt like my eyeball move inside my skull, my thought was like, it was kind of like, more like anxiety, I need to be in a hospital, right now. Not because it sucks because I trained so hard, not because I was going to get show money, not because ‘oh you know, I really want to fight, I thought, I need to be in a hospital, right now.”

The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt was originally scheduled to fight BJ Penn at UFC 199, but the latter has been removed from the card, for violating USADA’s policies on IVs. Recently the UFC announced that Caceres has agreed to take the fight on short notice. Miller was a short notice replacement for Dennis Siver, who withdrew from a scheduled bout with Penn, due to injury.

UFC 199 will be hosted by the Forum in Inglewood, California.