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Also by L. Jon Wertheim:

Glory Days, July 2022
Paperback / e-Book
This Is Your Brain on Sports, February 2016
Hardcover / e-Book
You Can't Make This Up, November 2014
Hardcover / e-Book
Strokes Of Genius, June 2009
Hardcover
Blood In The Cage, January 2009
Hardcover
Running the Table, October 2007
Hardcover

BLOOD IN THE CAGE
By: L. Jon Wertheim

Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, And The Furious Rise Of The UFC

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
January 2009
On Sale: January 15, 2009
Featuring: Pat Miletich
288 pages
ISBN: 0618982612
EAN: 9780618982615
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography

The first inside account of the sensational new sport of mixed martial arts, seen through the lens of its pioneer, Pat Miletich, “the patron saint of badass”

Based on unlimited access to the Ultimate Fighting Championship and its rival leagues, Blood in the Cage peers through the chain-link Octagon into the frighteningly seductive world of mixed martial arts, which is exploding in popularity despite resistance from every corner.

Wertheim focuses on Pat Miletich, a mixed-martial-arts pioneer and six-time UFC champion, who currently runs the most famous MMA training school in the world. Single-handedly Miletich has transformed a gritty town on the banks of the Mississippi into an unlikely hotbed for his sport.

He has also transformed many an average Joe into a walking weapon of destruction.

Wertheim intertwines Miletich’s own life story, by turns tragic and triumphant, with the larger story of the unholy rise of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, from its controversial, back alley roots to the fastest-growing sporting enterprise in America. For fans of Jeff MacGregor’s Sunday Money and Sam Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart, Blood in the Cage takes readers behind the scenes, right down to the mat, from a punch in the kidney to the ping of the cash register, as Wertheim brilliantly exposes the no-holds-barred reality of the blood sport for a new generation.

Media Buzz

Marketplace - PRI - January 27, 2009