By Eric Thomas: It’s sad to see the mess that has been made out of Colombian Edison Miranda’s (30-3, 26 KOs) once intriguing career. At one point he was 26 with 23 knockouts, being groomed for a potential title shot against then WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor. However, just when his career was skyrocketing to the top, he traveled to Germany and lost a foul-plagued bout to Arthur Abraham. The fight was perhaps one of the worst managed fights I’ve ever seen in my life, as Miranda was penalized over and over again for borderline low blows and an intentional head butt. Removing the deductions from the equation, Miranda won the fight easily over Abraham.

Following that fight, Miranda moved on three fights later taking on the power-puncher Kelly Pavlik, who quickly brought Miranda’s star power back to earth with a stunning 7th round TKO victory in May 2007. The fight left no question that Miranda was flawed defensively, and didn’t have the skills yet to defend against a power puncher with comparable skills to him. It was an especially brutal defeat, one in which Miranda was forced to take a lot of head shots from Pavlik until the fight was eventually stopped in the 7th.

Perhaps knowing that he would have little chance in a rematch with Pavlik, Miranda then moved up to the super middleweight division, saying that the strain of having to lose weight in order to make the middleweight 160 pound limit was weakening him too much and preventing him from fighting at his best.

That may be, because Miranda, a fighter who carries very little fat on his well defined muscular frame, is reported to walk around at the normal weight of 190 lbs. Having to strip off thirty pounds of almost pure muscle just to make the middleweight limit had to have been taking something away from his power.

However, even at super middleweight (168 lbs), Miranda was still caught in the trap of having to take off a lot of pure muscle each time he wanted to fight. However, at only 5’10” with a relatively small frame, Miranda wouldn’t figure to be big enough to compete against the larger light heavyweights (175 lbs) like Antonio Tarver or Chad Dawson, both of which are 6’2″ and over.

With his slugging instincts taking over and getting the best of him, Miranda was again stopped, this time by Arthur Abraham in 4th round TKO in their rematch in June 2008. Miranda did well in the first three rounds using power shots to control the fight over Abraham, who looked like he was just trying to survive the fight much like last time out. However, Miranda went after Abraham in the 4th round, letting both fists fly as he went for a knockout. However, it was Abraham who scored the knockout when he hurt Miranda with a right hand and knocked him down.

After he got up, badly hurt and was quickly sent back down with a big left hook to the head. He got up one more time, now totally defenseless, and was again sent down with another powerful left hook. The fight was then thankfully stopped by the referee. The outcome, however, seemed to indicate that as good as Miranda is as a power puncher, his chin doesn’t match his big time power. In a way, he’s like the equivalent of the former light middleweight knockout artist Julian Jackson, who was known for having one-punch power but was flawed by a weak chin and a tendency to be stopped at times by good, not great, fighters.

It’s questionable what Miranda can do to restore his once promising career. His power makes him a threat to anyone, but his chin makes him susceptible to almost any fighter with decent power. He, if course, can learn to protect his chin up to a point, but given his tendency to fold when pressed hard, it might not be doable for him regardless of how well he’s trained to protect his vulnerable chin.

He obviously needs to steer clear of any hard-punching super middleweights that might be a threat to his weak chin. Lucky for him, though, the super middleweight division is one of the weakest in all boxing with few real power punchers of note in the division. He’d probably be okay if he worked his way up the later in the WBO, because there are few power punchers there and he might do well against the likes of Denis Inkin, Karoly Balzsay, Allan Green and Jean Pascal.