UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic really, really wants to mow his lawn. He’s sick of winter and is jonesing to get on his new Cub Cadet Pro Z riding mower. Scooting around on his commercial-grade toy cleaning up the 8 acres of land he owns outside Cleveland is Miocic’s happy place.

Well, it’s one of his happy places. Miocic also enjoys the finer things in life, like red wine, which he drinks cold, wine snobs be damned.

“I’m a Malbec guy,” Miocic says when asked his favorite varietal. Then he remembers that he’s sponsored by Modelo, so he plugs it before getting back down to wine business.

“I really like Malbec, a little bit dry, not too much. I take my red wine and I stick it in the fridge. I like it cold. People are like, ‘Don’t drink it cold!’ I drink it cold.”

Drawing a contrast between lawn mowers and red wine is absurd, except for the fact the 6-foot-4, 240-pound Miocic is a collection of gracefully balanced contradictions.

For example, the UFC heavyweight champion is, by definition, the baddest man on Earth, yet Miocic exudes no menace whatsoever. Instead, he focuses his energy on others. Sacrifice is the name of Miocic’s game.

That ethic comes across most clearly at the firehouse and with his family. In both arenas, Miocic puts himself at the bottom of the food chain and does whatever he can to support everyone else.

At home, that means helping his pregnant wife, Ryan, get their house ready for their first child, who is due this summer. It also means catering to the couple’s two dogs, Primo and Mia.

At the firehouse, where he’s a two- or three-shift-per-week part-timer, sacrifice means doing whatever it takes to save people’s lives. It also means getting his chops busted just like anyone else.

But when it comes to his fight team, Miocic twists himself into a pretzel trying not to be the star of the show, even though that’s exactly what he is.

“If it wasn’t for my coaches I wouldn’t be here. They put their time and effort in, they sacrifice so much, they leave their kids at home … they’re always there for me. Their wives never complain, they understand. I really have to thank their wives, they’re amazing women for letting my coaches come with me.”

“We’re a well-oiled machine,” Miocic says of his team, which has been together for eight years, “We joke and we love and we laugh.”

“It’s a brotherhood.”

It all sounds positively bucolic — a communal world of Midwestern bliss.

Then you remember that Miocic’s day job involves stepping into a steel cage all by himself and beating another man senseless. Thus, Miocic spends half his time saving lives and half his time practically taking them away. The champion is aware of the conflict between his two worlds but consciously chooses to focus on what links it all together.

“They’re both the same thing,” Miocic says, “Being a fireman and paramedic, if something serious happens, I have to be calm, cool and collected. I can’t be going haywire because I have to help that person, help stabilize them, and try to make sure they’re better off and get them to the hospital.”

“That helps me out as a fighter because you have to be calm, cool and collected in the cage.”

Strip away the cliché, and Miocic is saying he’s cool with life and death situations. Watching him fight, it’s clear that Miocic is right about himself.

He does not have the pent-up aggression of Ronda Rousey or the insane self-assurance of Conor McGregor. He doesn’t even have the arrogance that comes with greatness like Jon Jones. Instead, Miocic is like a vanilla ice cream so flavorful that it punches you in the face.

The certainty of Miocic’s title reign is why he’s silently become the greatest heavyweight in UFC history. Winner of his past six fights, including a record three title defenses, Miocic is the rarest of things in the UFC’s most volatile division: He’s consistent. Where other men wilt under the mental pressure that comes with the coin-flip reality of fighting 265-pounds monsters in tiny 4-ounce gloves, Miocic doesn’t blink. He accepts the danger like a matador accepts a bull.

“One slip and you’re done. But you can’t worry about that. You half to go out there and fight.”

“I go in there and I’m like I either get the ‘W’ or I get caught and go to sleep.”

“It’s what I chose and I understand that.”

Miocic’s consciously centered calm is a marketer’s worst nightmare because it leaves nothing to the imagination. That’s why the story heading into his last fight was his opponent, “Street Fighter”-style behemoth Francis Ngannou. “The Predator” uppercuts so hard his foes get lifted off the ground. Miocic doesn’t even have a nickname. None of which actually mattered when the cage door closed. Miocic dominated Ngannou in a five-round clinic of pure mixed martial arts proficiency.

Now, with the heavyweight division in a rebuilding mode, Miocic is set to defend his belt against light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, and the UFC is building up the super fight by pitting the pair against each other as coaches on the organization’s first star-making machine, “The Ultimate Fighter.”

The show, which premiered on Fox Sports 2 on Wednesday, is a perfect chance for Miocic to show the world who he really is.

“I’m just a Midwestern boy who likes to fight.”