By Thomas Gerbasi

Jarrell Miller confirms with a laugh that “No kicks were thrown,” during his sparring sessions with Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, even though members of the trio had (and have) plenty of experience using their feet as well as their fists.

But during several training camps with the dominant heavyweight champions, it was all boxing. Well, 99.9% boxing.

“Vitali did try to kick the bag and we were laughing when he threw it,” Miller recalls. “He said ‘it’s been a long time.’ But sparring with those guys was great. The first sparring camp was probably the roughest. I didn’t know what to expect, and I was the only sparring partner left in the first camp.”

By the sixth or seventh camp though, Brooklyn’s Miller was holding his own, and it wasn’t a small confidence builder for a young man walking the line between two sports – boxing and kickboxing. But eventually, if a fighter is serious about making a run at a world title, he has to choose one or the other. And when the 26-year-old Miller steps into the ring tonight at the Grand Casino in Hinckley, Minnesota for a six-rounder against Raymond Ochieng, he will do so as a full-time boxer.

“I’m strictly putting all my attention and focus into boxing now,” Miller said. Maybe he just got tired of getting kicked in the leg.

“It wasn’t really the leg kicks,” he laughed. “I want more money. The money wasn’t too bad in kickboxing, but I got approached by a couple different promotional teams and I got an all right offer, so I felt that if there was a time to move on boxing, this was it.”

Working with Greg Cohen Promotions and Dmitriy Salita’s Star of David Promotions, Miller is currently 11-0-1 with nine knockouts, and he’s fighting opponents (like the 26-18-3 Ochieng) that prospects with 12 bouts fight. He knows it too, though at the same time, he comes from a kickboxing world where he was competing against some of the best in the sport on a regular basis. It’s quite a change in worlds to those looking from the outside, but he believes it all works out in the end.

“My hands have always been my strongest point, and in kickboxing, a lot of those guys lack in hand speed,” he explains. “So sometimes, even the average journeyman in boxing can give you a little bit of trouble if you’re not prepared. They can survive, they know how to hold on, but in kickboxing, the top guys are coming to fight, and you’ve got to be ready for them. But my hands are generally beating them, so it kind of evens out at this point. I know in boxing right now I’m not fighting top competition. It’s guys that are decent and helping me build my experience up. We just have to beat them up.”

So no chance of overconfidence when he goes from fighting someone like Mirko Cro Cop in kickboxing to Ochieng?

“No, it’s just focusing on getting past this guy and then getting ready for the next one.”

Miller hopes that next one will be right around the corner.

“We’re trying to get a fight once a month,” he said. “That’s the goal.”

A busy heavyweight with knockout power, world-class experience and the gift of gab? Could Miller one day join Deontay Wilder and Bryant Jennings as top American heavyweights in a division that hasn’t seen that many in recent years?

“The division is still like a big question mark,” Miller said. “There are a lot of guys that are durable or okay, but they’re not a hundred percent charismatic. They’re not exciting. I like Deontay, and he has good punching power, but I don’t feel like he has the boxing ability to stay there too long. (Adviser) Al Haymon’s definitely going to milk him as long as he can until the top guys like myself get up there, and then that’s all she wrote. But it’s still a big question mark. I think Bryant Jennings is gonna get smashed in six rounds by (Wladimir) Klitschko. He’s always in good shape but he doesn’t have the boxing ability to win that caliber of fight.”

He chuckles.

“I hope it stays like this until I get there.”

It may, giving Miller all the incentive in the world to keep fighting, keep winning and keep moving up the ladder. And sure, it’s early days for the 6-foot-4 “Big Baby,” and he has to work on staying focused and keeping his weight under control (he ballooned from 262 ¼ to 281 ¾ in his last two fights), but there’s a feeling that he could make a mark one day, and all marketing and personality angles aside, he believes that what will get him to the top is a high fight IQ.

“It’s a thinking sport, and that’s what I always based my ability on, being able to think,” he said. “Even at my worst or at my most tired, I can go in there and spar eight, nine, ten rounds and beat these dudes up without knocking them out. And it’s a thrill. I can knock you out or just beat you up, and a lot of these guys can’t do that. Once they can’t knock out their opponent or really beat them up, they’ve mentally lost the game. I feel one of my strongest points is that I’m not just physically, but mentally strong, and if Plan A doesn’t work, I can also do this.”

So when does it all happen? You know Miller has a plan.

“I think by the end of the year, we should at least be 20-0,” he said. “I want to be the biggest name in New York first, the top prospect, and that’s the nearest goal right now, to win every fight, look awesome, knock dudes’ block off and by next summer, it will be like ‘okay, we’ve been hearing a lot about this kid; we want to see him in a title fight.’”