The jury is still out on Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller, the huge—too huge?—heavyweight who has edged up the ratings ladders and is poised to grab a title shot or a career definer fight within the next six months.
But not all are sold on Miller; the chatter the day before his April 28 fight against Johann Duhaupus focused more so on his weight, rather than his talents. 304 pounds, the scale said, when he stepped on the weighing device…and no, wise guys, the scale didn’t groan, but naysayers did.
TOO BIG, they grumbled.
And the grumbling continued, on social media channels, even while he was throwing 80 punches in round ten, 11, and 12 against the rugged Frenchman Duhaupus. Come back and see us when you drop 40 pounds, many armchair advisors stated…
Not gonna happen, advisers, that’s the message we heard from “Big Baby” when he came on the Everlast “Talkbox” podcast. He last saw the 250s when he was a young teen, he told us. He’s built big and big he shall remain, is his declaration.
The weight aside, even the most cynical had to enjoy the package HBO put together which spotlit the bond between cancer battler Lily Weaver, and Miller.
“Lily Weaver, she’s like my little sister now, she’s 15 years old, has pediatric cancer, and I’ll give her a call in a little bit,” he told us Tuesday. “She had chemo late last week…She had beat it, and it returned, and they want to do a bone marrow transplant.” They need her immune system to pick up to do it, so she’s in fighting mode. “Her energy’s real,” he told me. He sees in athletes and celebs a lack of genuine empathy, and wants to keep it real and show decency and leadership in that vein as his profile gets larger, it is clear.
Regarding celebs, Miller hangs a bit with mega-star 50 Cent, but that’s not a new relationship. Miller and Fiddy knew each other from the neighborhood. They grew up in Queens, and back then, 50 wasn’t always doing lawful stuff. “When I was up ‘n coming, I didn’t do lawful stuff, too. From an adolescent age when you grow up in an urban area that’s poor, you pick up certain bad habits. And then you learn these bad habits can get you in trouble and you learn how to turn your life around. Before I hit rock bottom at that point, I was able to do something positive, which is punch people in the face!”
He spoke some on chatter that popped up last month, when 50 touched on it, regarding a woman he’d seen, and then, he said, subsequently saw Deontay Wilder. That chatter, he said, is “dead in the water” to him. Oh, but he’s not all about Wilder. “I think the most corniest speaker, right now, is Deontay,” Miller told me. He said that many of Wilders’ pronouncements feel fake now, as opposed to like 2 years ago. “It’s not genuine, they’re trying to build his profile, but they’re not doing it the right way,” Miller said. “When it comes to being a people person, he’s not.”
Miller mostly prefers to look forward, and I would be too, if I had the upside, and the leverage Miller does. He works with promoter Dmitriy Salita and enjoys autonomy more than most all fighters, in that he does direct contact with HBO, and isn’t letting stand ins get the word, and then pass it on to him.
The pod is well worth a listen, lots more good stuff in there, my friends. Listen, and if you like, do the team a favor, and subscribe and give a nice review, if so moved.
