As the days go by, the banter from unbeaten super middleweights Edison Miranda (29-2, 25 KOs) and Jean Pascal (19-0, 14 KOs) heats up as the two fighters take turns trading barbs, perhaps leading to a fight on January 11th, 2008, if everything goes right. Both fighters are arguably the hardest punchers in the super middleweight division with true one-punch knockout power in each hand.
Pascal, 25, originally from Haiti and now living in Canada, is ranked #2 in the World Boxing Organization. He is a seven time light middleweight amateur champion of Canada and the winner of the 2002 light middleweight Commonwealth games. His style is somewhat like a mix between Roy Jones Jr. and Miguel Cotto, except he hits much harder then either of those fighters and is capable of stopping his opponents with one shot. He likes to punch to the body, a style that suits him well because he reportedly has hand problems at times due to his tremendous punching power. His main problem, it seems, is that he doesn’t punch with a closed fist much of the time, something that robs him of a lot of his power.
As it is, even his open hand punches are dangerous because of the incredible speed with which he throws the punches. Pascal would figure to be a very dangerous opponent for Edison Miranda, mainly because of Edison’s chin issues that have been exposed in his bouts with Arthur Abraham and Kelly Pavlik, as both fighters have been able to hurt Miranda with single shots. In Pavlik’s case, he completely destroyed Miranda in May 2007, stopping him in the 7th round, and knocking him down three times in the process. The fight was absolutely one-sided with Pavlik winning every round of the fight and dominating almost all exchanges between the two.
Miranda lost a lot of his sense of invincibility following the defeat, and almost immediately decided to move up from he middleweight division to the super middleweight class, blaming a portion of the defeat on his having to take off a lot of weight to make the middleweight limit. To be sure, Miranda’s true weight is in the mid 180s, with little fat, so for him having to drop 20+ pounds to fight at middleweight, it would seem like something doomed for eventual failure. However, even at 168, Miranda has still had to take off a lot of weight for each of his bouts, which makes one think that he may eventually in the not so distant future move up to light heavyweight (175), where he would be able to more comfortably make weight without drastic measures.
Miranda won’t be making that move, I’m guessing, until he exhausts all his efforts at becoming the super middleweight champion. Clearly, if he continues to win he’ll likely get a shot at a title in within a short time. A win over a fighter such as Pascal, would greatly elevate Miranda’s status within the division. Should he defeat Pascal, Miranda, won’t likely get a shot at Joe Calzaghe, the current WBO/WBC/WBA super middleweight titles, as Calzaghe has said that he’ll only be fighting several more fights against top fighters. However, Calzaghe will soon be out of the way with retirement or a jump up in weight, leaving the three titles open for Miranda or Pascal to contend for.
It’s hard to say who would win between Miranda and Pascal, since both of them have so much power. Pascal has yet to lose, and thus hasn’t learned how to taste defeat. On the other hand, he hasn’t faced near the quality of opposition that Miranda has, meaning that he’ll possibly be in for a big shock once he’s in the ring with a fighter in the class of Miranda and it could very well be too much for Pascal to handle. Ideally, his management would want to bring him up slowly before facing a fighter like Miranda, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. Miranda may seem like easy pickings to them after his humiliating defeat by Pavlik.