Jerry Bohlander was first exposed to combat sports in the form of high school wrestling. Also, experimented in other affairs. He was teammates with UFC fighter Pete Williams.

Bohlander began his MMA career on November 9, 1995 at United Full Contact Federation 2, where he defeated Phil Benedict by armbar.

With his victory at UFCF 2, Bohlander received an invitation to the open-weight UFC 8 tournament. However, he still had to fight against his teammate Pete Williams at the Lion's Den gym in order to see who would fight in the event. The match lasted twenty minutes before Bohlander submitted Williams to a heel hook.

At the event itself, Jerry won his quarter final fight against Scott Ferrozzo, who outweighed him by nearly 120 pounds. Jerry would then lose his semi-final bout to K-1 and future Pride veteran Gary Goodridge via KO.

After losing his fight with Goodridge, Bohlander would go on a 5 fight win streak that would culminate in him winning the UFC 12 Lightweight tournament.

Following his victory at the UFC 12 Lightweight Tournament, Bohlander was knocked out by future UFC Middleweight Champion Murilo Bustamante.

Bohlander would bounce back from this knockout loss by putting on arguably the finest performance of his career against Kevin Jackson. Kevin Jackson (an olympic gold medalist at the 1992 Barcelona games) was 3-1 at the time with his one loss being to UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Frank Shamrock. Jackson and Bohlander fought for ten minutes ending with Bohlander securing the armbar victory. The bout won Wrestling Observer Newsletter's "Fight of the Year" category for 1998.

Subsequent to his victory over Jackson, Bohlander was defeated by future UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, Tito Ortiz, Bohlander would go on to fight 3 more times in his career before retiring from the sport with a record of 11-4.