Following a three-year hiatus from the sport, Jarrell Miller found his way back to fighting on boxing’s biggest cards and came close to a career-best victory at the weekend. However, despite admitting that he thought Miller had done enough to get the win, one British heavyweight declared that he was ‘not upset’ about the decision from the judges.
Miller famously withdrew from a showdown with Anthony Joshua in 2019 after failing a drugs test, only for Andy Ruiz Jr. to swoop in and provide one of the most shocking upsets in the history of boxing. After a lengthy ban, Miller returned in 2022 and by December 2023 he was fighting on pay-per-view cards, but lost that clash with Daniel Dubois by a last-second knockout.
On Saturday night, Miller was given yet another opportunity on the big stage, where he faced Ruiz himself and did enough in the eyes of the majority of viewers, as well as judge Robert Hoyle (116-112), both Lou Moret and David Sutherland scored the bout as 114-114 – resulting in a controversial majority-draw.
In an interview with Boxing Social, British fan-favourite Dave Allen agreed that ‘Big Baby’ had done enough to get the nod on the scorecards, but didn’t feel as though Miller should be given the chance to fight on cards of such magnitude, if any at all, and was therefore ‘not upset’ by the result.
“The crowd were booing Ruiz and cheering Miller. Miller shouldn’t be on the shows for a start, lots of drug cheats are on lots of boxing shows and people will say ‘well, you don’t call them out’, but no drug cheat should be on any boxing show. Miller is earning a lot of money, a lot of people said that they wouldn’t work with him again and they are.
“Miller won the fight, I thought, but I am not upset that he didn’t get it to be honest.
“I shouldn’t be on them shows because I am not good enough, but there’s loads of heavyweights that are and they should be on there. There are so many other heavyweights that have never failed a drugs test, that could have boxed Andy Ruiz, why does it have to be Jarrell Miller?
“There are so many world-class heavyweights about, you have got 20 or 30 guys that you could have picked to box Ruiz and we would have been happy with the match. Why Jarrell Miller? Because he talks? How many more eyes does he bring to that show, really? I am not watching for Jarrell Miller, nobody is.”
Jarrell Miller is likely to stick around as a gatekeeper at the world level, despite being unranked by the four sanctioning bodies. The American is already being mentioned for a battle with British veteran Derek Chisora – who is expected to bow out of the sport in two fights’ time, and he would also be a frontrunner to appear on the Fury-Usyk undercard – after outings on back-to-back Turki Al-Alshikh bills.
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