MEET THE… BIG BABY
25 siblings, two 18-wheel trucks and 21 stone of fighter out to dethrone Anthony Joshua.
AFTER close to an hour of conversation, Jarrell Miller is finally lost for words. Or rather he is lost for a number.
He is trying to put a figure on how many siblings he has and it has proved a difficult task. ‘This is going to get complicated,’ he says.
‘My mother had a couple of kids and she raised me with my stepfather. Well, my older brother, Greg, sort of raised me and he has five kids and I count them as siblings.
‘Then it gets crazy. My biological father, that’s a whole thing man — he left. My aunt, she is a nurse and she doesn’t lie, she says he has 20 kids. But my other aunt is a bit cuckoo and she says 15.
‘If you asked me now for an answer — I’d probably have to go with 25 from all sides, give or take. It’s quite large.’
Yes. Quite large. But then that’s just about right for the American they call Big Baby, who weighs somewhere north of 300lb (21 stone) and has never knowingly passed up an opportunity for comment. He is the all-shouting, all- raving contender who has barged his way into the path of Anthony Joshua, with whom he will share the boxing ring in his home city of New York on June 1.
Some folk don’t like it — they wanted to see Joshua in with Deontay Wilder, Tyson Fury or Dillian Whyte. Some also object to Miller’s actions and words, which in the past nine days have included a shove in New York and doping accusations in London. His response? ‘Man, I don’t give a s***.’ Good, bad or tiresome, that’s boxing — brash words have a successful sales history and Miller’s payday for his role in raising American awareness of Joshua is around £5million.
That’s the value Eddie Hearn and the powerbrokers see in him. And yet, like so often in this sport, there’s more to this 30-year- old than he usually chooses to show.
His fascinating story goes via Brooklyn, Belize and Canada, near-misses with the law, school brawls, 18-wheel trucks and a former job he rather vaguely describes as ‘driver, not a taxi cab driver — pharmaceuticals’. He goes back to how he started fighting. ‘ I moved about a bit as a kid,’ he says. ‘We left Brooklyn when I was two, lived with family in Belize until I was six and then came back.
‘The next part is important because I guess it’s how boxing got started. I mean, I was always an angry kid. Quiet, but a lot of anger issues. If someone said something to my sisters, I’d be throwing hands.
‘When I was older, about 17, I remember pinning my stepfather against the wall because he was being wrong with my mom. That kind of anger. But as a kid, that anger gets you trouble from other people.
‘In the end that is why I had to go to Canada to live with an aunt when I was 13 because I was fighting too much. I remember in one fourmonth period in junior high in Brooklyn, I got in seven fights and one of them was really bad.
‘This kid tried to charge at me and I did this football move on him, a chop block. I dived into his knee and he flipped over on to his back, and he was a bit f***** up.
‘A load of his boys came for me and I stomped them too.
‘After that my mom was called in by the principal. He said he was going to expel me so she sent me to my aunt in Canada. That was an experience, man. They were all so nice, so polite. In Brooklyn, it’s all, “Kiss my a**”, but there, they were so proper. I loved them.
‘There were only two black kids in the school, but they never
‘I was always an angry kid. Quiet, but a lot o of anger issues. T Then that anger g gets you trouble from people...’
treated me any different. I was there almost two years and I came back to Brooklyn, all relaxed. And then after three days some kid pinched my bike. Man, suddenly I was like, “This Canadian s*** isn’t going to work here”, so I went off and stole someone else’s bike.’
It was on that bike and on that very day that he first walked into a fighting gym, just shy of 15.
‘Part of it was wanting to be able to fight,’ he says. ‘I had it in my head from before Canada that I needed to learn to fight and to be able to defend myself against more than one person.
‘But I ain’t going to lie. I was riding that bike past the gym and in the window was a woman with big t***. That’s part of why I got off the bike and went t in.’ Miller started kickboxing and d at t16t 16 took k up boxing. He turned professional in the former in 2006 and the latter in 2009, with careers in the two sports running side by side, along with a number of other jobs, which currently includes his Big Baby Trucking company — he owns two 18-wheelers — and a martial arts school that he runs.
‘I’ve always been busy — I’ve done all sorts of things for work,’ he says. ‘My first proper job was Dunkin’ Donuts. I must have put on 70kg in that f****** place.
‘And I worked in a car dealership for six months after leaving high school ( at 16). I also worked security for two or three years, working as a bouncer. There’s been other stuff. A driver, not a t taxi i cab bdi driver, pharmaceuticals.’ h ti l ’ It is not entirely clear how far Miller went down certain paths, just that he eventually righted himself. ‘I did some crazy s*** when I was younger,’ he says.
‘God must have been watching over me because it could have been a lot worse. I can’t put it all in the media. I just know that at some point I didn’t need the stress. I just wanted to be in the gym.’
On that front, he has had success. As a kickboxer he held a 21-2 record, but quit after a doping suspension in 2014, which Joshua has quite reasonably identified in response to Miller’s unfounded accusations earlier this week.
In boxing, the American remains unbeaten b t with ith23 23 wins, i one d draw and 20 knockouts. That he is called Big Baby is peculiar — his first manager thought it would get some publicity and when Miller started turning up to his early fights in a nappy, it did. Then his results gained momentum, the name stuck and now he is about to earn a fortune.
But he has faced nothing like the sort of opponent he will encounter at Madison Square Garden. The general expectation is that it will be one- sided, assuming Joshua doesn’t take things lightly.
If there is a defence against suggestions this fight will be easily contested, it is that Miller is ranked No 2 by the WBA and No 3 with the WBO and he does have a deceptively high punch output.
He also claims to have been dropped only once in his sporting career, contrary to claims from Tyson Fury that he floored him seven times in a single sparring session a few years back.
‘That’s s***,’ Miller says. ‘ Fury didn’t get me down once. Only time I went down was sparring in kickboxing. I took a spinning backkick in the stomach and that was it. Nothing in boxing.’
Be that as it may, Joshua has made a habit of battering the guys who face him. And the popular suspicion remains that if Miller is to back up his numerous words with an upset for the ages, he might need to bring a few of those siblings into the ring with him.
He will no doubt enjoy trying to prove everyone wrong.