WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder has lashed out at Jarrell Miller following the Brooklyn fighter’s failed drug test.
Miller, 30, was scheduled to face unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 1 but the New York State Athletic Commission refused to sanction the fight after news of the failed drug test emerged this week.
“I’m disappointed because he let his family down, he let his kids down,” Wilder said.
“He let a life changing opportunity slip through his hands and that’s what I’m mostly disappointed in, because of the family.
“He talked about how he came up and living with roaches and having to add water to milk, just like a lot of our culture who have to go through the same thing.
“But when you get this opportunity, you hold this opportunity dear, the things that you know are going to get you in trouble, you don’t do it!”
The Brooklyn brawler was expected to earn around £5 million to challenge Joshua, who holds the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight championships.
Wilder continued: “This man, with the opportunity he had to make the money he was going to make, I wouldn’t have been taking nothing. I’d have just been drinking motherf**king water.
“Win, lose or draw he was going to get this money and it was life changing money, no-one was expecting him to beat Joshua anyway.”
Wilder claimed that many in the boxing industry didn’t like Miller and said that the undefeated American shouldn’t be given another chance.
“Hell no. I don’t know what is going to happen to him,” Wilder said. “He is not a likeable guy in boxing anyway. The people in boxing, the business side of boxing, don’t like Jarrell Miller because of how he carries himself, the things he says. A lot of people are happy this happened to him.”
Miller has protested his innocence. His team have requested VADA test the B sample they submitted on March 20, the same day as the failed drug test.
