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Jarrell Miller on Anthony Joshua: ‘I’ll take all his belts before leaving the ring’

Photo by Ed Mulholland/Matchroom Boxing USA
Fighters Network
04
Apr

Theory: The outside-the-ring heavyweight scraps will be as ferocious as the in-ring varieties, in the next half-year, because there is a money pot out there which will have all sorts of folks in rumble mode trying to get a piece of it.

The Anthony Joshua vs. Deontay Wilder heavyweight championship unification fight will richly reward the principals who glove up and, quite likely, the ones who promote, host and screen it.

Now who will broadcast it? Showtime? HBO? Some other entity, like an Amazon sports division…or a newly formulated Dana White/Al Haymon marriage unit? Time will tell…

Anyway, if you think HBO put on Dillian Whyte versus Lucas Browne because they think Whyte is the future, one to build on, then you…you are not right.



HBO wants to be in the Anthony Joshua business and Peter Nelson has been working for a long spell to make that happen. Now, he’ll need cooperation from Wilder and his promoter Eddie Hearn, of Matchroom Boxing. Hearn got more so into the HBO business, basically, when Daniel Jacobs hooked on with the Brit promoter and became an HBO-exclusive fighter. The deal made sense for Jacobs, being that he’d like another fight with unified middleweight titleholder Gennady Golovkin and/or would be pumped to get a tango with THE RING Magazine champion Canelo Alvarez, somewhere down the line. Those two guys are also aligned with HBO. Yes, this is a “Who’s side of the street are you on?” sort of dynamic, this sport. It’s often about politics and politics are often about money.

Joshua has been a Showtime fighter since a deal was hatched and announced in May 2016. A “multi fight” deal. No specifics given. But you only have to see the jockeying going on, with HBO, to understand that the deal will be up soon. And when the deal is up, a bidding war will ensue. Maybe. Perhaps Team Joshua will be so grateful to Showtime for its earlier loyalty, that they look to re-up with the network. Or HBO has been keeping powder dry and throws a showy package at Joshua, which would include, say, a fight against the talented and talkative Brooklyner Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller. He’d been a Showtime guy, on a Showtime trajectory, last year. He was being featured on “ShoBox” and it looked like he was on a parallel route headed to a collision course with Deontay Wilder. (Those two have a history which could easily be exploited and mined to help hype their face-off.) Now, Miller’s being featured on HBO. On April 28, he will be in a support bout to the main event which has Danny Jacobs meeting Maciej Sulecki, at Barclays Center, and on HBO. Miller will fight Johann Duhaupas, a Frenchman who fought Deontay Wilder in September 2015. Wilder won by TKO in round 11 on that night. Ideally Miller would like to do better.

The jumbo trash-talker sat down with select media on Tuesday and talked about his hopes, his dreams and some possible future foes.

Here are some highlights:

“There’s a lot of talk about other fights for me after April 28 but I’m going to continue focusing on Johann Duhaupas and not let anything affect my training. Of course I’d like the fight with Anthony Joshua.

“HBO has done a great job with me and I respect them very much.

“I want to show Eddie Hearn and HBO what I can do in the ring every time out. I’m 310 (pounds) right now but I’ll be 290 when I get in the ring, I’m a big hitter and I’ll prove it in the ring on April 28 against Johann Duhaupas or anyone else that gets in the ring with me.

“Deontay Wilder has great punching power but (Luis) Ortiz was too old to compete with him for 12 rounds. When Deontay faces a young hungry bull like myself, it will be a different story.

“Lucas Browne didn’t want to be in the ring; he was unprepared and out of shape. Dillian Whyte is not a ferocious puncher but he did what he was supposed to do; however Browne wasn’t even trying.

“I feel asleep watching Anthony Joshua vs. Joseph Parker. It wasn’t a very exciting fight. Joshua wasn’t going to lose a fight in England on the scorecards. AJ has been given gifts from the amateurs through the pros. His whole career has been in England. Come to Brooklyn, AJ, and I’ll show you what’s really up!

“Fighting smaller or older boxers isn’t going to test AJ. Fight someone like me and I’ll take all his belts before leaving the ring.”

So…

You can see Miller, who isn’t signed to an exclusive deal with either HBO or Showtime, acknowledges that more than one lane is open to him, if he keeps winning. And what lane he takes depends on consistently winning, and also how that Joshua contract for Stateside TV rights plays out. Not to mention, maybe it’s wise to mention again that UFC President Dana White, backed with Hollywood money, is lurking and looming over this whole sphere, so maybe this thing takes a turn we haven’t much pondered.

Miller nails it when he says he’s best advised to simply keep on fighting and take care of business where he can most influence matters: the ring. Fate will play out around him over the next year and lots of that will be out of his hands. So he can keep munching the cheeseburgers and being a refreshing voice in he division and, ideally, show more power in his next bout, to take out the Frenchman quicker than Wilder did.

 

 

 

Listen to the Everlast podcast hosted by Michael Woods here and follow him on Twitter at @Woodsy1069.

 

 

 

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