NEW YORK — People are talking about boxing again! Sure, it took a guy getting his hairpiece punched off his head to do it, but why complain?
Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, 317-pound heavyweight Jarrell Miller got hit so hard his hair fell off. No, not figuratively. Miller's hairpiece was actually loosened up by the force of a straight left to the face he took from his 288-pound opponent Kingsley Ibeh, with about a minute left in the second round. Then a quick and equally stout Ibeh right got his head rug flapping. The poor pelt peeled back further during some infighting between the big lugs and an exchange of blows as the round ended.
In the moment, confusion reigned inside the arena. I was in the upper deck for the fights, drawn to the room that hosted Ali-Frazier by a fab card headlined by the Shakur Stevenson-Teofimo Lopez 140-pound title matchup. I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on from the pricey cheap seats. I don’t think anybody around me could, either. What boxer's dumb enough to wear a wig into the ring? Though you didn't have to be Vidal Sassoon to know all that movement meant something bad was going down on top of his head.
“What is happening with Miller’s hair?” fight caller Todd Grisham asked in a curious panic as the round wound down.
Everything became very clear, and very comical, to all witnesses as the bell sounded. As Miller went back to his corner, super slo-mo replays revealed his hair had at one point actually almost flown all the way off from the power of an Ibeh punch. But rather than spend the minute resting on his stool and hoping whatever ailed his second-class coif would correct itself, Miller stood up during the break and faced the crowd and with a massive smile ripped off the semi-detached rug off his head. He tossed it to the crowd, the way end-stage Elvis Presley would a sweaty towel. All that was left on his dome was a black oval outline where the failed adhesive had been applied. Miller’s move filled the room with ecstasy.
“Now he’s got the Bozo the Clown haircut!" yelled Todd Grisham on the PPV broadcast. Grisham, despite being a former WWE caller, agreed with the rest of the broadcast team that he’d never seen anything like it in the squared circle.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the poorly glued hairpiece. Miller, whose nickname is “Big Baby,” and whose white-and-gold trunks resembled an oversized diaper, was sluggish and inactive in the first two rounds of the scheduled 10-round bout, both of which he lost on judges' scorecards. But the Brooklyn native pulled a reverse Samson after losing his hair. The fans weren’t the only folks he’d won over: Two judges gave Miller seven of the last eight rounds, enough to earn him a split decision in the bout of overweights. Miller, whose career record now sits at 27-1-2, did a happy jig and rubbed the top of his head when announced as a winner.
Miller’s post-fight interview wasn’t taken up with talk about fight strategy or the thrill of victory. Nah, it was all about losing his hair. He claimed he’d mistaken “ammonia bleach” for shampoo while showering at his mom’s house earlier in the week, and that ate up his ‘do. Rather than just show up bald, he opted for a hairpiece. Toupee technology has improved by leaps and bounds in my lifetime; check out Marv Albert’s rug during his appearances on David Letterman in the ‘80s for confirmation at how far we’ve come. But hair science apparently hasn’t yet perfected a wig strong enough to take a heavyweight's punch, or at least news of that better mousetrap hadn’t yet reached Miller’s stylist.
Miller’s rug toss got the biggest pop of the night inside the arena. Boxing impresarios have to buy ink to get any attention these days. But the flying wig story went viral, trended on all social media, and dwarfed all news of the night’s headliner bout. Stevenson won the feature match in a performance for the ages. I typed “boxer” into Google this morning, and before another keystroke, “...loses wig” was suggested.
