Fighting after 40: How UFC fighters are changing their ways to keep careers alive

WHEN ANDREI ARLOVSKI enters the Octagon for the feature prelim on Saturday’s year-opening UFC fight card, the onetime heavyweight champion will be taking a significant step forward. Arlovski will be in his 41st UFC fight, moving him within one of the promotion’s record.

Not for long, though.

Just an hour or so after the Arlovski bout, Jim Miller will stroll to the cage for his turn — his 43rd UFC fight. Miller, 40, will be breaking his own record and, at the same time, maybe breaking the heart of the big man giving chase. Again.

This will not be the first time Arlovski — who turns 45 in three weeks — is reminded that he’s making no progress toward reaching the top of the list for most appearances in UFC history. The last time Arlovski fought, back in June, Miller was also on that card. The two also shared fight nights in 2021 and 2019.

How is Arlovski supposed to catch the UFC’s record holder when Miller remains in lockstep with him? Is it possible that booking fights on the same nights as Arlovski is a strategic plot by Miller to remain No. 1?

“That would be the smart thing to do,” Miller acknowledges playfully, “but no, it just seems to happen that way.” His laugh seems innocent enough.

On Saturday in Las Vegas, Miller (36-17, 1 NC) will take on lightweight Gabriel Benitez and Arlovski (34-23, 1 NC) will face Waldo Cortes-Acosta at UFC Fight Night (ESPN+, main card at 7 p.m. ET, prelims at 4 p.m.). Miller and Arlovski’s opponents will enter the Octagon a combined 17 years their junior and with 68 fewer career fights. While many younger fighters are still finding their way at the highest level of MMA, Miller and Arlovski have been around long enough that they’ve had to evolve their methods multiple times to ensure continued success. Moreover, each has had to find personal motivations to fuel them into their 40s — like chasing a record holder.

If Miller were secretly plotting, it could have nothing to do with the UFC’s longevity mark or even the record for most Octagon victories. (He and Arlovski are 1-2 there as well, with Miller two ahead with 25 wins.) Maybe sticking close to Arlovski is simply Miller’s way of avoiding being pegged as a fight card’s “old guy.”

“I grew up watching that guy,” Miller acknowledges. “It is pretty crazy to think that we’re now sharing fight cards. I mean, Andrei was a UFC champ before I even started fighting.”

Arlovski was with the UFC even before Dana White. He debuted as a 21-year-old at UFC 28 in November 2000, a few months before the Fertitta brothers and White bought the promotion. Also making a first Octagon appearance that night was another future heavyweight champ, Josh Barnett, and in the main event, Randy Couture won the title for a second time. Because it was the first fight card to utilize the Unified Rules of MMA, UFC 28 is considered the beginning of the sport’s modern era.

By the time Miller arrived in the UFC eight years later, Arlovski had already won the heavyweight belt, successfully defended it, lost it, made an unsuccessful bid to regain it, and left the company to seek new challenges. After six years away, he returned to the UFC a decade ago and is still at it.

As for Miller, he made his Octagon debut at age 25 on a UFC 89 card headlined by Michael Bisping vs. Chris Leben. Bisping is now five years into retirement and a Hall of Famer. When Leben enters the cage these days, it’s as a referee. And yet Miller is still a UFC fighter, having never left.

It feels like Miller has been in the UFC forever. And Arlovski even longer. How do they keep going?

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“MAN, THERE’S JUST something to respect about older athletes, especially in a combat sport that is viewed as a young man’s sport,” says Duncan French, senior vice president of performance at the UFC Performance Institute. “They’re not just relying on God-given talent anymore. They’re leaning on their experience and they have to be creative in accommodating the reduced physical capabilities that come with aging.”

Working with these older fighters presents French and his staff of trainers, dieticians, therapists and sports scientists with both opportunity and challenge. These athletes have been training and competing for years and have developed an understanding of what works for them. But they’re not the same athlete as when they were younger. “So our strategic approach is to be innovative and, just as important, collaborative,” French says. “We go to them with, ‘Hey, let’s figure out new ways to get the job done.'”

Arlovski and Miller are among 15 fighters aged 40 or older on the UFC’s active roster. Both stop by the Performance Institute for workouts or consultations whenever they’re in Las Vegas. Arlovski has also worked remotely with the PI’s team, particularly with the director of sports science, Roman Fomin, who speaks Russian and can interact with Arlovski in his native language.

“When I am in Las Vegas, I go there and they check my health and show me ways to train smart, fight smart,” Arlovski says. “And when I am at home, they send me vitamins and protein to help me stay strong. They’re very professional, very helpful, especially Roman. If I don’t understand something, he explains in Russian.”

The Performance Institute is a 30,000-square-foot facility that offers an Octagon, boxing ring and wrestling mats, strength and conditioning areas, therapy rooms, a pool with an underwater treadmill, sports medicine, nutrition areas and more, plus a staff that tends to athlete needs from all angles. In addition to the vast PI across from UFC Apex in Las Vegas, the company now has one in Shanghai, China, and another is soon to open in Mexico City.

The facility in Vegas worked wonders for one elder fighter in particular. When Glover Teixeira, 42 years old at the time, was training to challenge for the light heavyweight title in 2021, he became a frequent user of the PI’s services, including a healthy meal program and a revamped training schedule that put a premium on sleep and recovery. After a lifetime of pushing himself hard in training, Teixeira was given a regimen that sometimes called for 14 hours in bed to rest his body. “People might think, oh, that’s nice,” Teixeira said after the fight. “No, I don’t like staying in bed.” He did like the result, though: Teixeira became the oldest first-time champion in UFC history.

“It was really insightful on his behalf to say, ‘How can I prolong my career?'” French told ESPN at the time. “And not just, ‘I can still compete at the top level. I want to push out a few more fights and have a few more paydays.’ But actually, ‘I can still work towards a title.'”

That championship pursuit — or even simply prolonging a career — is an uphill battle for an older fighter, French acknowledges, because the body of a 40-something athlete has been depleted gradually through the years. Muscle elasticity is reduced, including the heart’s ability to pump blood through the cardiovascular system. Muscle size isn’t what it once was, and fast-twitch muscle fibers don’t perform the same. The body is breaking down. “When you look at the physiological changes inherent with aging,” French says, “there is a performance impact.”

To offset that, French and his team put a premium on recovery, focusing not just on the time after a workout but also on the older fighter’s approach during a gym session itself. They reduce sparring and emphasize the importance of protective equipment, in the interest of brain health. They modify training techniques to accommodate old injuries. They shorten gym sessions. “We have to maintain the intensity at competition level in workouts,” says French, who has a PhD in exercise physiology. “But we just do less of it.”

This is what separates MMA fighters from older athletes in other sports. Before coming to the UFC, French worked with Olympians and other elite competitors in basketball, swimming and other sports at the English Institute of Sport in the United Kingdom. Before that, he was the head of strength and conditioning for Newcastle United Football Club of the English Premier League. “Combat sports is different because it’s a sport of consequences,” French says. “Getting knocked out is not just about losing a fight. It comes with a physical consequence. And even sparring to prepare for a fight can bring damaging consequences that athletes in other sports don’t have to factor into their training.”

For French and the PI staff, working up a training regimen for a fighter, especially an older fighter, is a process of reverse engineering. “We start by looking at the objective of our sport — getting a stoppage win and not getting knocked out yourself — and we strategically work backward from there,” French says. “We want to make sure someone is not being exposed to excessive hits to the head, which are not complementary to success. We try to get the athlete out of the mindset that if you want to be a fighter, you just have to be tough, no matter the consequences.”

“Combat sports is different because it’s a sport of consequences. Getting knocked out is not just about losing a fight. It comes with a physical consequence. And even sparring to prepare for a fight can bring damaging consequences that athletes in other sports don’t have to factor into their training.”

Duncan French, UFC Sr. Vice President of Performance

It seems logical that older fighters would be at a place in their lives where longevity strategies hit home in ways that headstrong young up-and-comers might not be thinking about yet. But veterans of the sport also have spent years relying on tried-and-true training practices, and old habits die hard. By the time Arlovski began working with the Performance Institute, he had already prepared for fights in dozens of training camps, and his methods had brought him championship success.

“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword for us,” French says. “Older fighters tend to have much more awareness of their body and are able to articulate it. That’s a positive thing. But they also can be set in their ways — which they have every right to be. They know what has worked for them throughout their career. So our role is to say to the fighter, ‘OK, you are directing the conversation here, and we’ll accommodate you every way we can.'”

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MILLER HAS BEEN through the rigors of the aging process before. Or so he thought.

In early 2015, he started experiencing debilitating joint pain and tingling in his extremities. His back, which had been banged up for years from hard training, wasn’t getting better, even if he took time away from the gym to rest it. It got to the point where he would finish a workout on the mat and try to stand up, and he would have to put his hands on his knees and struggle to his feet. “I was getting up like an old man with a groan, like, ‘Oh, man,'” recalls Miller, who was just 31 at the time. “And I was like, I guess this is what it’s supposed to be like at this age.”

On top of his physical issues, Miller began experiencing a brain fog that made him feel like he had Alzheimer’s. He wondered if he had been punched in the head too many times. From 2015 into 2016, he sometimes walked into a room and froze, not knowing why he was there. His short-term memory was at a loss. “My wife would mention something that we had done a day earlier and, nope, I’ve got nothing,” Miller says. “But I could remember back to 2010 and name the color of a car we passed on the way to my parents’ house.”

Miller was resigned to calling it quits as an MMA fighter, and he targeted his farewell for UFC 200. He had competed at UFC 100 seven years earlier, so he figured this second milestone event in July 2016 would be a proper sendoff. Then, a few weeks before his fight, Miller saw a doctor and did some blood tests, and it turned out he had Lyme disease.

“I had had my athleticism stolen from me by a tick bite,” Miller says.

Days after starting treatment, he was already beginning to feel better. He put on a stirring performance at UFC 200, knocking out Takanori Gomi in the first round. That started a three-fight winning streak, although another skid followed. It wasn’t until well into 2018 that Miller finally felt somewhat like his old self. He attributes that revitalization to having recently opened his own gym, where he had more control of his training, and also to a new devotion to growing his own food, pesticide-free, which gave him control over what he puts in his body.

“We needed to reinvent the wheel, in terms of training and everything else in my life,” Miller says. “And that took a couple of years to figure out.”

Now Miller has won four of his last five, all the victories coming by finish. If he emerges from Saturday’s bout unscathed, he aims to be a part of April’s UFC 300. Miller would be the only fighter to compete at UFC 100, 200 and 300.

Will it be the end of the road? That is still to be decided.

Miller does not believe that being 40 years old makes him a danger to himself inside the cage, “because I’m in ‘protect myself’ mode in there and I’m aware of the danger of a fight.” Still, he acknowledges the humbling reality check that aging brings to one’s life. Last December at home, he saw a granola bar wrapper on his kitchen floor, and when he bent over to pick it up, he partially tore the patellar tendon in his left knee. “So there’s definitely a vulnerability in my body that I never had to think about when I was younger,” he says.

He believes his final act as a fighter will be an honest look in the mirror. “Man, the guy that looks back at me, he’s my biggest fan and harshest critic,” Miller says. “That’s why I’ve chosen to conduct my career the way I have. That’s why I didn’t develop a persona and say ridiculous things at press conferences, even though my bank account would be bigger if I had. But I’ve still managed to experience several high moments, and I want one more. Let’s have one big fight, one perfect performance, and then I can ride off into the sunset.”

It’s not easy letting go of something you’ve done your whole adult life. Fighters inevitably lose physical capabilities, but they don’t necessarily lose the fight that’s inside them. And no one ever seems to be in a hurry to fight their way out the exit door.

Jim Miller might never have that perfect moment he’s chasing.

And Andrei Arlovski might never catch that lightweight — Jim Miller — he is chasing.

But Arlovski will continue the chase. “Nothing but the best to Jim,” he says, “but I am going to keep trying to catch up.”

Even if Miller continues to be on the same fight card? Says Arlovski: “I just need to win this one, and I need to win the f—ing next one!” He has lost his last two fights.

As the oldest fighter in the UFC, Arlovski is constantly being asked about longevity. Before and after each of his most recent bouts, he consistently said he planned on continuing with the sport for a couple more years. What does he say now that those years have passed? “I plan to fight for a couple more years,” Arlovski says.” At least.”

Arlovski says he draws inspiration from boxer Bernard Hopkins, who fought after age 50 and was a champion in his late 40s. “I need to keep going,” he says. “I still have the fire in my eyes.”