‘Sometimes you get robbed,’ reflects Jarrell Miller

Heavyweight Jarrell Miller believed he’d done enough to defeat former unified heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz Jr., a sentiment echoed by the cheering Los Angeles crowd post-fight.

Miller fought Ruiz to a 12-round draw at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles on Saturday night, a largely uneventful bout where Miller asserted dominance after Ruiz’s initial success in the first four-and-a-half rounds. The scores were 116-112 for Miller with two judges having it 114-114. 

“I know I did enough,” Miller said in response to whether he felt he had won. “I threw more punches; it’s called effective aggression.”

According to CompuBox, Miller outlanded and out threw Ruiz, landing 183 punches out of 514, while Ruiz connected with 113 out of 355 punches. In punch stats round-by-round, Ruiz only outlanded Miller in the first three rounds.

Miller expressed frustration with the fight’s outcome, suggesting that fighting in California, Ruiz’s home state, may have biased the scorecards. He questioned the judges’ neutrality, noting one judge from California and another from the neighboring state of Nevada, which he deemed too close to home for a fair decision.

“We need different judges, not so close to California,” Miller insisted. “We had a California judge, a Nevada judge; we knew we were coming into his hometown — one judge scored it for me and two called it a draw.”

Miller’s career had been interrupted by a suspension for testing positive for PEDs, a crime that saw him removed from a scheduled bout with Anthony Joshua in 2019 and replaced with Ruiz, who famously won. Miller returned to the ring in 2022 after a lengthy hiatus.

“That’s boxing; sometimes you get robbed,” Miller reflected. “I just want the fans to keep supporting me; I’ve been an underdog my whole life.”

Looking ahead, Miller expressed interest in facing Jared Anderson, nicknamed ‘The Real Big Baby,’ despite Anderson’s recent knockout loss to Martin Bakole.

“I’d like to fight on the Fury-Usyk undercard,” Miller revealed. “I said Anderson was going to get messed up. I’ll still fight him in December; there’s only one ‘Big Baby,’ and that’s me.”