Abraham-Miranda: “This time Arthur will knock him out” - Ulli Wegner

By Erik Schmidt: The war of words between IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (26-0, 21 KOs) and super middleweight Edison Miranda (30-2, 26 KOs) continue on, this time with Abraham’s trainer Uli Wegner chiming in, saying “this time Abraham will knock Miranda out.” He made indeed be right, because the latest word is that Abraham is having an excellent training camp and is looking the best he’d ever looked. That can’t be good news for Miranda, who previously lost a 12-round unanimous decision to Abraham in September 2006.

The fight, as most people already know, turned out to be a controversial one, in which Abraham’s jaw was broken in two places, and Miranda being penalized numerous times, twice in the 5th & 7th, and once in the 11th round for low blows, and a head butt. Honestly, it was minor miracle that Miranda wasn’t disqualified by referee Randy Neumann, who showed the patience of a saint by allowing Miranda to stay in the fight despite his repeated fouls. I know that Neumann has taken a lot of heat from the boxing fans, especially American fans, but he didn’t deserve any of it as far as I’m concerned, because he was only calling what he was seeing in the fight in terms of fouls from Miranda.

A lot of things have changed for both fighters since then, with Miranda now a super middleweight after taking a terrible beating at the hands of middleweight Kelly Pavlik, in a 7th round TKO loss in May 2007. I thought then that Miranda was foolish to take the fight with Pavlik, for he didn’t match up with the American, and didn’t have the defense or the overall boxing skills to beat him. As it turns out, I was right about my assumption and Miranda took an embarrassing beating.

What I was wrong about, though, was that Miranda would instead of pushing for a rematch ( which seemed like the logical thing to do given the circumstances) he would almost immediately abandon the middleweight division altogether, retreating to the relative safe confines of the weaker super middleweight division. There Miranda has prospered, beating mostly low quality fighters, the ESPN types without a whole lot of talent.

After having two easy fights, it looked as if Miranda was about to step it up against former super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler recently, but unfortunately for Miranda, Kessler pulled out so that he could challenge Dimitri Sartison for the WBA title. Perhaps that was a good thing for Miranda, because most people felt, me included, that Kessler would have made easy work of the slower, less skilled Miranda, and likely would have beaten him almost as easy as Pavlik did.

As for Abraham, nothing but good things have happened since his fight with Miranda, he’s looked impressive in easily beating four consecutive challengers – Sebastian Demers, Khoren Gevor, Wayne Elcock, and Elvin Ayala - to his IBF middleweight title. None, however, have had the status that Miranda holds in the boxing community, which I suppose is why Abraham is wasting his time with giving Miranda a rematch.

This isn’t something that Abraham would do otherwise, because once he beats a fighters, he tends to keep moving forward to his next opponent. But, unfortunately for Abraham, most of his challengers are virtually unrecognizable out of Europe where Abraham tends to fight all of his bouts. Abraham’s title won’t be on the line for this fight, as the bout it being held at a catch weight of 166 lbs, so Miranda will have to be content just to have the honor of a getting another shot at Abraham rather than having the title on the line.

It’s unclear what Miranda can do differently this time out that he didn’t last time. Abraham was the much better skilled fighter in their previous fight, using fast combinations to win most of the exchanges. It wasn’t until late in the fight, after Abraham had suffered a broken jaw, that Miranda was able to win some of the rounds. Even then, Abraham still continued to dominate most of the action of the fight, befuddling Miranda with his speed and combinations. Barring another injury to Abraham, which is quite unlikely, I see Abraham winning the fight in style and finally shutting the mouths of many of Abraham’s detractors.