Miller said he hoped to come into the June first fight significantly lighter than his last fight. Yesterday he posted an impassioned denial of wrongdoing on his Instagram page. He says, quote, "I am absolutely devastated upon hearing the news my boxing license has been revoked in NY State and I will be vigorously appealing this decision. I have NEVER knowingly taken any banned substance and when I found out the news last night I was totally shocked….these results came just one week after another voluntary test that I had taken which was completely clean. I refuse to just lie down and let my dream be taken away from me when I know in my heart that I've done nothing wrong. .. I don't need a banned substance. Remember don't believe everything you hear and see. The facts will prevail and I shall be vindicated.
Miller - as we've come to know him over the years - has come from a background of adversity. He grew up in Belize City -and migrated to the US when he was a boy. He said when he got to Brooklyn is when he learned what real poverty was about:
Jarrell Miller - World Heavyweight Contender
"You could see the difference in poverty line depending on, you know, where you live and where you stay at and how your family, you know, the way they move. In Belize it's a lot more different. It's like you know, you might feel you're poor, but you don't feel it inside you know emotionally, because you know all your family's together, you eat dinner together, you go to school together, your cousin down the block, your aunty down the block, everybody have fun, you know, it's a different vibe, when you're on an island, or when you're in a Caribbean country, but like in New York, it's totally different, you have to take trains, you have to take buses, you have food stamps....and emotionally it changes kids. Kids act differently when they come to the states from when you live in Belize, and you know it taught me a lot, but it made me kind of like hard at the same. Kind of like an M & M, soft on the outside, but hard on the outside, yeah."
"I was raised around my family, who's mostly Belizean, you know, so it's like down the block it's my Aunt Marion, who's literally a mile away, and then my other uncle and aunt is two miles away, you know. I got my momma who is still in Queens, who is about four or five miles away, So my family is not that far from me, which I'm lucky to have. So should anything, God forbid, happen, I can always get a plate of food down the block."
Miller had hoped to see his greatest moment when he fought for the heavyweight title in his hometown of New York at the boxing mecca of Madison Square Garden. A replacement will now fight in his place, but none has been named yet.
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