Heavyweight Jarrell Miller sat down for a lengthy interview and told the interrogator that the PEDs found in his system were NOT ingested deliberately, he’s been doing VADA testing, and he thinks his career won’t take a severe hit from being bounced from a planned fight June 1 with Anthony Joshua.
In a talk with IFL, with Kugan Cassius, the day after the Joshua vs Andy Ruiz fight, Miller (23-0-1) said no, he didn’t take any steroids. He blamed a supplement for the first positive, for the substance GW1516, and then said that the other chemicals, EPO and HGH, were injected into his system via a shot into his elbow.
He said “I know for a fact it’s a tainted substance,” of the first test, and maintained he didn’t “take any ingredient” to get a leg up.
He said he paid a lot of money to get supplements tested, presumedly so he wouldn’t pop positive.
He didn’t name any supplement which he suspects might be the product that contained GW1516.
“What the hell is going on,” he said that was his reaction when the third positive was presented to him. He disclosed that a “stem cell shot with my elbow, which has growth factors in it and EPO in it, at one time, for the elbow” rang a bell at VADA.
He said nope, he didn’t take steroids, or anything for muscle gain. He took things for an injury, he told watchers, and he blames himself for getting the shot.
The 300 pounder said he still doesn’t know how he ingested the chemical which caused the first red flag, to reiterate. “Ya boy effed up,” he said, but the EPO and HGH were not at a level that could aid his performance, he declared. We do not have access to level of presence in the tests, so we’d have to take his word for it.
The Brooklyn born boxer said yes, it hurt to take the financial hit, but he is certain he will get another title shot, and that it will come sooner than most assume.
The 30 year old fighter sees boxing as being like a “game of chess” that can change at any moment, and he could easily be back in the title shot mix.
Miller called the PED snafu a “one time thing,” and didn’t reference a prior positive, from 2014, when he was doing kickboxing. His attitude seemed upbeat, and said that a measure of man is how you handle adversity.
He thinks he is “pretty optimistic” he can again work with Matchroom, and Eddie Hearn, and he doesn’t think any doors have been closed on him.
The athlete proclaimed to those that opine that he should be banned forever that no being is perfect and, basically, let ye without sin…”You just gotta deal with it head on,” he said, and that’s what he’s doing now, in his mind.
“I cried once,” he shared, and he told God that he was feeling lost.
He’d slept on the floor for 15 years and ate vienna sausage and granola bars when times were lean, growing up, and he had the world in his hand…and then lost out…so he was feeling a bit raw. But just the one time, he said, did he shed tears.
It did hurt, hearing the flak, but he appreciated that guys like Dillian Whyte told him to keep his head up. People like him, and Tyson Fury, they come from certain places, and he identifies with them.
And, that Ruiz win, what about that? Was it weird watching that battle versus AJ? “It hurt, it hurt, but at the end of the day, I was happy for Andy, because Andy’s a good dude,” he said. “Deep down in my heart I’m happy for him,” and yes, he would have preferred it was him, but anyway.
What about AJ? Miller said he makes no excuses for AJ; “he lost one, if he’s the champion that everyone thinks he is, he’ll be back..I’m not gonna kick him while he’s down” even though AJ busted on him some after the PED kerfuffle. Was he pleased that AJ lost? He pondered that, and wouldn’t cop to it. You might recall, in the presser in NYC, Miller accused AJ of being a PED user, but he didn’t revisit that allegation in the IFL hit.
He hinted that a couple good doors have opened up for him, though he wouldn’t specify what that was.
He got deep a few times, talking about some people close to him who’ve passed away, so indeed, he’s had to wrestle with out-sized issues of late. Four people close to him died within the year, he shared, and one buddy with kids died…so there are lots of things swirling in his mind. “Will this situation humble me, in some ways it probably will,” he said. But he will still be a jumbo personality, he told us.
And will he apply for a license anywhere soon? Miller said he’d not go to outside the US, and he wants to serve an unofficial sentence, pass some PED tests, and show everyone that he’s clean. He spoke of the WBA ban, from March 20, and their six month suspension. He wants to fight by the end of the year, he said.
He told Cassius he’s funding VADA testing now, to prove he’s a clean athlete. I will reach out to VADA for confirmation, for the record.
He admitted that he’d taken aim at VADA before, but now wants to work with them, and have a back and forth, in a way he can call them before he so much as buys a packaged drink at Starbucks.
He told watchers to keep on keepin’ on, and that everyone has haters. He says he can look in the mirror, and know he’s a “good damned man.”
More deets–He told his son, age 8, that he took PEDs, but not on purpose. He doesn’t lie to the boy, he told Kugan.
“Never…never,” he said, when asked if he’d not find himself testing positive again. He said he now looks at burgers, implying the meat might be tainted now. Yes, he is sorry, but more so because he let himself down, and his family could have used that hand up that the financial windfall would have provided.
The jumbo hitter said he’s a New Yorker, gritty from the city, and that city peeps go up and down, and need to soldier in. “It strengthens you,” he stated.
Cassius even tried to cheer up the boxer, telling him that he told people that asked if Miller is a bad person that the boxer is NOT a bad person. This was, I suppose, part of unofficial offering by IFL to get this exclusive, one might argue…
“I’m still a person of God,” Miller said, and he said he was man-ning up in this ordeal. This bad spot is just another chapter, he said.
His last message on the 40 minute session: For people who wanted to come see him fight, “I love you guys, if you still hate I still love you, we’re fighters, human beings, we make mistakes, you just gotta man up and deal with it. And I assure you, a hundred and ten percent, a billion percent, I will be heavyweight world champion some day, and I’ll make it up to you guys. I really will make it up to you guys, whatever I do, I’ll make it up to you guys. And keep supporting the movement, because If I’m not one of the biggest heavyweights in the world, I’m one of the realest, that’s for sure…AJ, hold your head up, man, you’ll be back!”
My three cents: The reaction on social media has been one of dubiousness. People don’t seem to be latching on to the story. Miller would help his case by furnishing the supplement that contained GW1516, and also outing the person who gave him an elbow injection with works tainted by Human Growth Hormone and EPO, though, as he relayed, it was supposed to contain stem cells. We’ll see where this line of defense by Miller goes, and if he moves forward, we are curious if he steps it up, and seeks to bring a suit against anyone or any company that contributed to the snafu, with his specimens testing PED positive. Because that cost him multi millions of dollars and he’d deserve to get recompense for that loss.
Founder/editor Michael Woods got addicted to boxing in 1990, when Buster Douglas shocked the world with his demolition of the then-impregnable Mike Tyson.
The Brooklyn-based journalist has covered the sport since for ESPN The Magazine, ESPN.com, Bad Left Hook and RING. His journalism career started with NY Newsday in 1999.
Michael Woods is also an accomplished blow by blow and color man, having done work for Top Rank, DiBella Entertainment, EPIX, and for Facebook Fightnight Live, since 2017.
