Promoter Eddie Hearn is shaking his head at the news involving heavyweight contender Jarrell Miller, who recently failed another drug test. The boxer came up positive for a performance enhancing drug.
He was quickly removed from a planned ESPN televised fight, set for next month at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas. The Nevada State Athletic Commission will reportedly suspend the boxer.
Miller was scheduled to face unified champion Anthony Joshua, who is promoted by Hearn, in June 2019 in New York City.
But a few weeks before that fight, he was removed after testing positive for several performance enhancing drugs - including GW1516, EPO and HGH.
Miller also failed a drug test in 2014. He was suspended for nine months by the California State Athletic Commission after methylhexaneamine was found in a urine sample he gave for a kickboxing fight at Glory 17.
Hearn believes Miller is suffering from a mental condition, where the boxer is not confident enough to compete without the assistance of a performance enhancer.
"What he never did in the Anthony Joshua situation was - he never held his hands up and said - 'listen, I wanted to win so bad, I cheated. I made a massive mistake, I'm sorry.' And when you look back now, it's actually worrying that he never done that. A lot of people have been saying for a long time that this guy's been cheating for a long, long time - and it worries me that if he's prepared to do what he did, after the scrutiny of the AJ situation, for a warm-up fight, then maybe he has been cheating his whole career, who knows," Hearn told Pep Talk UK.
"To be honest, I feel sorry for him. I think he has a psychological problem. I don't think that he can bring himself to fight without PEDs. That is the honest situation. It don't look good in this situation that the best thing about Jarrell Miller is his workrate and his ability to throw a lot of punches. Who knows what happened in the past, but what we do know is - for someone to behave like that, he ain't right [in the head], it's not right.
"Top Rank gave him a lifeline, they gave him a big contract when he didn't deserve it. The Nevada Commission licenses him, when some say they should have never have licensed him, but they did. But he couldn't be banned before or suspended, because he didn't have a license when he failed with AJ. Now, the Nevada Commission will undoubtedly ban him. Other commissions, not all commissions, but most commissions will follow suit with that situation. And by the way, I think every promoter and broadcaster will too.
"I think he needs to go and have his mind right. One of the most high profile doping events of all-time, and you somehow get a lifeline in your career and financially, and then you go and do that in a warm-up fight. That's why I say that I don't think he's capable of fighting without it."