By Eric Thomas: Former three time middleweight/junior middleweight champion Julian Jackson (55-6, 49 KOs) has always been a favorite of mine, a fighter who fought in the 80s to mid 90s and known for his many knockouts, with many of them coming from a single punch. To this day, he is still regarded by many to the hardest puncher ever in the middleweight/junior middleweight division, though some fighters like Gerald McClellan, who holds two victories over Jackson, are thought to have power approaching that of Jackson, it’s still not even close from what I’ve seen of him.
However, as good as Jackson’s monstrous power was, he was flawed by having less than an iron chin, which let him down in defeats to McClellan, Quincy Taylor, Mike McCallum, Verno Phillips and Anthony Jones. The defeats to Phillips and Jones, however, came at the end of Jackson’s career, when he was clearly not the same fighter he had been earlier on when he held the junior middleweight and middleweight titles. For many boxing fans, we’ve they’ve been waiting for another fighter to come along with the same kind of impressive power that Jackson formerly possessed, someone with one-punch power in either hand. A fighter that somewhat answers mimics the same kind of power that Jackson used to have is none other than Edison Miranda (30-3, 26 KOs), who recently was stopped in the 4th round by Arthur Abraham last week.
I realize that Miranda isn’t a particularly popular fighter right not given his recent loss, as well as his brutal 7th round stoppage to middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in 2007, but if you ignore those losses for a second and focus just on Miranda’s awesome power, you’ll see a lot of similarities to the Jackson. Granted, Miranda has yet to win any kind of championships like Jackson did in his prime, but that’s understandable because the middleweight division is much tougher now than it was back then.
As good as Jackson’s power was, I’m not so sure that he could beat fighters like Abraham or Pavlik, even though I rank Jackson’s power way beyond either of them. The problem with Jackson, however, is that his chin wasn’t on the same level as his power, meaning that in fights against top level opposition with good power, unless he was able to get to his opponent with one of his big shots, he was in danger of being stopped in his own right.
The same thing applies to Miranda, who clearly is the hardest puncher of this day and age in both the middleweight and super middleweight divisions. His chin, though, is not up to the task of facing the harder punchers, and neither is his defense, which is rather porous.
If he had a better defense, then perhaps he could get by and win a championship or two like Jackson, but so far he’s a work in progress, and judging by how he looked against Abraham last week, he has a long ways to go before he ever can be considered as a future title holder. I think Miranda throws about three-fourths as hard as Jackson with his right hand, but doesn’t even come close to the kind of power that Jackson had with his left hand – Heck, no one else does either, for that matter.
In a head to head matchup between Jackson and Miranda, it would probably be quick and brutal, with Jackson taking Miranda out in the 1st round. I couldn’t see Miranda going beyond the first round, as Jackson would be throwing major leather wanting to try and get him out of there as fast as possible to avoid having to take Miranda’s big shots. Miranda isn’t the type of fighter that would ever run from his opponent, which would play directly into the hands of Jackson, as he would have him coming straight at him and wouldn’t have to search for him. Like Jackson, Miranda’s chin is a major liability against big punchers, and against the biggest puncher of all time in the middleweight division in Julian Jackson, Miranda would be way out of his league, I think.