Whitney Miller, the 2012 Miss United States winner, is gunning for her black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but she may soon give MMA a try.

“I want to see how I feel,” Miller told MMAjunkie Radio. “I want to go in there and I want to know if I really want to do this.”

Already, there are two people who don’t want her to fight – her mom and dad. But the 24-year old Texan always has been attracted to challenges.

“If I decide that it’s not for me, and it’s a job and it’s not fun anymore, I’ll do something else,” Miller said. “But right now, this is what’s fun.”

A former teen athlete, Miller did wakeboarding and track and field while she entered and won beauty contests. She found BJJ while working out at a gym, and it was love at first roll.

“Now, I’m addicted to it,” she said. “It was just super challenging to me. Pageantry is about this super lean body that’s skinny and looks good on the stage and in the lights, but this is just very, very challenging.”

After three months of training, Miller entered a jiu-jitsu competition in Austin, Texas, and took home first place in no-gi and second in gi. She’s trained with UFC vet Cub Swanson and works out at Vasquez Academy and Austin Kickboxing Academy.

Now six months into her new passion, she estimates it might take her 10 years to earn the grappling art’s highest rank. But, she added, “It’s not going to stop me. I’m in for the long haul.”

“It’s just real,” Miller said. “You can’t worry about how you look. You just have to focus on performance, and that’s why I fell in love with it.”

She isn’t sure yet whether she loves MMA, which she began training after watching gym partners wrestle, box and kickbox. But she wants to find out whether she has the stuff to get in the cage.

In the meantime, she’s traded her tiaras for ear-guards, as “cauliflower ear is not really my style,” she said. “I had a little bump on my ear not too long ago, and I got really nervous.”

Miller might project a new image of beauty as an MMA-fit model, but she’s not ready to mix the two worlds.

“I’m saying goodbye to pageants,” Miller said. “I did the pageant thing, and I really excelled in that, but now I’m looking the other way and doing something completely opposite and seeing where I can go with this side of me.”

And pretty soon, she’ll probably need to have another chat with the folks, if they’ll even hear her out.

“One of the reasons they’re so resistant to it is that they don’t understand the sport, and also I’m their daughter, and they don’t want to see me get hurt,” Miller said. “But they’re starting to open up a little bit to BJJ. As of right now, MMA is completely closed off. They don’t even want to talk about it.”

MMAjunkie Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia, MMAjunkie lead staff reporter John Morgan and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.