Coming off a week in which the Algerian boxer was publicly criticized for her naturally elevated testosterone levels, boxing on Saturday night (August 3) will once again spoil weightlifter Jarrell Miller, a man whose persistent and long-standing quest to “get high” was anything but natural.

Unfortunately, unlike Imane Khelif, Miller’s past isn’t compelling or relevant enough for anyone to take it seriously or give it any real thought, so he can once again be seen as just another “boxer.”

The truth is that Miller has boxed four times in a while, since serving a two-year suspension for a couple of doping violations (GW501516, EPO and HGH), and each of those four fights has gradually gained in importance and prize money. For example, his last fight was a relatively substantial fight with Andy Ruiz in Los Angeles on a card sponsored by Riyadh Season; meaning Miller will be paid handsomely just for showing up. Even his last fight, a 10th-round knockout loss to Daniel Dubois, was a lucrative outing for Miller, as it again took place on an event sponsored by Middle Eastern men.

This, as a career path, contradicts the idea that cheaters never prosper, and Miller, if anything, is now proof that the opposite is true in boxing. In fact, by continuing to compete, Miller is perhaps showing that there is nothing catchier than fame, and that even black marks can be erased or, better yet, used as a selling point.

That was evident earlier this week when Miller was photographed having a touching moment with promoter Eddie Hearn, someone who famously — and quite rightly — criticized Miller for failing a drug test ahead of his 2019 fight with Anthony Joshua. Unhappy with that, Hearn, when asked, even made it official that he would never work with Miller again out of principle.

But now, although not directly related to the Americans, it seems that time has healed all wounds and there is no greater weapon than money from the Middle East. If you have any doubts, look at how many supposedly toxic relationships in boxing have been repaired recently; look at how many cheeks have been turned; look at how many hands have been held. Not only is he a man of unlimited wealth, Turki Alalshikh, he of the magic touch, is apparently also the world’s leading relationship consultant, mending, for better or for worse, every bridge we are told has been burned or broken in our sport.

In the case of Miller and Hearn, the unlikely union is less problematic than disappointing. Of course, we can understand why it happened and why Miller was forgiven by so many, but that doesn’t make it right, nor does it make it any easier to watch Miller perform in the ring and pretend everything is fine.

Because he really isn’t. It’s challenging to look at him objectively—that is, through a lens that isn’t blurred—and it’s challenging, moreover, to endure the silence of others when watching him perform on fight night. Promoters, commentators, pundits, journalists, all are equally culpable, and yet, ultimately, what is the alternative to this collective indifference? With boxing allowed, it’s surely right that we treat Miller the same as anyone else; the same as any other boxer allowed to box in 2024. Grid history or not, nothing good comes from dredging up the past, they say, no matter how relevant and critical dredging up the past may be to what’s happening now, today.

Certainly, in Jarrell Miller’s case, you could argue that his PED issue is more significant than anything else he brings to the ring in 2024. It’s more significant than titles won, opponents defeated, and any pre-fight sound bites or goals, that’s for sure. It’s also something that should be mentioned in every fight preview, and even in the report, regardless of the outcome, and something that, in a more ideal world than this, should be announced by the ringmaster during the pre-fight introduction.

Unfortunately, this is probably too much to ask.

Still, if the entire boxing world is able to reach for its phones and say what it thinks of Imane Khelif on Thursday afternoon, one can only hope that similar outrage — or even just scrutiny — will provide the soundtrack to this weekend’s Miller-Ruiz fight in Los Angeles. That’s the least a boxer in Miller’s position deserves, given the speed with which he returned to the ring and how welcomed and rewarded he was upon his return. It seems wrong that he’s now flourishing — even if only financially — without any reaction or even just a reminder at every turn of what he did.

Rather than cruel, such reminders can be seen as crucial, cautionary, if only to keep awareness alive and provide some sort of deterrent should they have Miller’s thoughts during training camp. After all, in a world where perception is everything, if we can’t rely on the authorities to appropriately punish doping cheaters in this most perilous of sports, we can at least invest in and appreciate the damage to reputation.

“It’s compelling,” Miller’s promoter Dmitry Salita told me last year, “because Jarrell is very attractive and fans will watch him fight. But he’s still paying the price for what he did, and it seems like some people who might give him a chance aren’t willing to do so.

“But my opinion is this: If you commit a crime, you do time. He did time and it was a substantial part of his career. It’s been over four years since it happened (the failed test), so that’s a long time. He wants to make amends to his family and he wants to apply his talent. I think if someone fails a test, they should be suspended. But when they get out, they need to be able to take advantage of every opportunity they can. If Anthony Joshua’s team says, ‘Oh no, he’s a former drug cheat, we’re not going to fight him,’ then it doesn’t make sense now.”

As challenging as it is to hear and stomach, Salita is absolutely right. If boxing as a sport is going to hand out short-lived bans for failed drug tests, however severe or tolerant, we need to learn to accept the tarnished boxers back into the team later on once those bans are served. Whether we can forgive them or support them at that point is another matter, but certainly, if you are allowed to fight, you also need to fight. Then the boxer must secure redemption and forgiveness, perhaps even from those closest to him.

“Based on what he told me and what I saw, he feels great remorse for what happened,” Salita said. “We all make mistakes, and hopefully we learn from them and it never happens again. That’s our common goal.”

On Saturday, Miller and Khelif will return to the ring. Miller, as mentioned, will fight Andy Ruiz, the heavyweight who took advantage of Miller’s dishonesty to stun Anthony Joshua in 2019, while Khelif will fight Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori in the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games. Both of these fights will feature hints of controversy and celebrity, but only one of the two incidents will go viral and draw the attention and unwanted opinions of politicians, celebrities, and influencers.

Why that is is anyone’s guess. But the popularity and prestige of the Olympics certainly have a lot to do with it, as does the format of the amateur fight; brief, straightforward to watch, digest, and then cut to size for social media. The image of Khelif towering over her opponent and delivering blows with her muscular arms is catnip for those bracing for a gender debate, and pairing that image with the image of Italian Angela Carini hunched over, surrendering, and crying after taking two of those blows created the perfect storm on Thursday (Aug. 1). Now, whether rightly or wrongly, Khelif, the “monster” who has been defeated by other women in the past, will be followed by controversy and hatred wherever she goes.

Miller, by contrast, has survived his scrutiny. Perhaps because a doping cheater in professional boxing is no different from his opponent—a telling statement in itself—Miller is, in the eyes of the uneducated masses, just another heavyweight boxer with a powerful punch and a substantial belly. He is not someone whose image is prominently displayed on an endless social media feed, nor are there any clips of him “lifted up” and beating an opponent so challenging that he turns away and refuses to continue. Instead, Miller is able, in a sport of smoke and mirrors, to hide in plain sight, his mistakes considered commonplace, forgivable, our little secret.