By Eric Thomas: In a shocking upset, middleweight contender Sebastien Demers (25-2, 9 KOs) was defeated by a 10-round split decision by Colombian Dionisio Miranda (20-2-2, 18 KOs) on Friday night at the Gare Windsor Salle des Pas Perdus, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Demers, ranked #5 in the WBO and #12 in the IBF middleweight division, won most of the first half of the fight, but began taking heavy shots in the second half, and was knocked down in the 9th round by a huge right hand from Miranda.
Demers, instead of using his superior boxing skills to win the fight, elected to trade shots with Miranda, which led to problems when Miranda, a fighter with awesome power in his right hand, began landing more and more from the 5th round on.
Demers had lucked out in the first half of the fight, as Miranda’s work rate was atrocious (which is actually typical for him, as it turns out) and he only threw a handful of punches in each round. An excellent boxer/puncher, Demers easily outworked Miranda in the early going, hitting him with jabs, hooks and moving a lot to keep Miranda chasing him and unable to land.
The second round was somewhat close, with Miranda landing a couple of big right hands – one to the body and the other to the head, although it wasn’t enough for Miranda to take the entire round given all the shots that Demers hand landed. When Demers isn’t getting hit, he looks awfully good for a middleweight, showing better boxing skills than 90% of all the other top fighters, including some of the champions.
However, his power isn’t quite up to where it needs to be to be truly a first rate fighter, and his thought processes seem to be lacking at times as well, especially when he opts to stand in front of his opponents like he often did with Miranda in the fight.
The 4th and 5th rounds were dominated by Demers, who moved well and hit the slow-moving Miranda with a lot of jabs to the head as he would plod forward. When Miranda would get in punching range, he would blow his chances by standing frozen, as if he were trying to out-think Demers.
All he had to do was let his hands go and things would have worked out well for him due to his enormous power, but instead Miranda would just stand there, studying Demers as if he were a chess piece that he was thinking of moving. By the time he would attempt to finally punch, Demers would more often than not be long gone, having landed his jabs and moved away to the safety of the outside.
In the sixth though nine, Miranda finally began throwing hard punches with a lot better frequency, although still not a very high work rate for any top fighter, but it was enough to win the rounds by a narrow margin. The exception, of course, was the 9th when Miranda nailed Demers with a big right hand, staggering him and causing him to go down. After he got up at the count of seven, Demers was able to last out a mini flurry by Miranda, who quickly tired himself out after throwing a pitiful six punches.
Near the end of the round, Demers came back strong and landed some really good shots at the tired out Miranda. Demers fought well in the 10th, hitting Miranda with a lot of punches and appearing to win the round. All in all, a bad performance by Demers, but I still think he did enough to either get the win or at least a draw. Miranda gave away far too many rounds and just stood around instead of punching much of the time. The final judges’ scores were 95-94, for Miranda, 94-95 for Demers and 95-94 for Miranda.