By Eric Thomas: Super middleweight contender Edison Miranda (32-3, 28 KOs) stopped a badly over-matched Joey Vegas (11-5-1, 4 KOs) in the 5th round of a scheduled 10-round bout on Friday night at the York Hall, in Bethnal Green, London. Miranda, 28, came into the fight at a career high of 178 and fought only in spurts of activity. After a slow start in the first couple of rounds, Miranda came alive in the 3rd and dropped Vegas twice.
Two rounds later, Miranda teed off on Vegas against the ropes, hitting him at will with clubbing right hands until the referee Ken Curtis moved in to halt the slaughter just as Vegas sagged into the ropes badly hurt.
Though Miranda’s ranked highly in the super middleweight division, ranked #6 in the WBO and #9 in the IBF and WBC, it appears that he won’t be able to make the 168 pound class for too much longer without having to badly deplete himself in making the weight.
Miranda controlled much of the fight with his powerful right hands, but Vegas, 27, had his moments, too, sandwiched between the many lulls in action from Miranda. However, it seemed as if Miranda could turn on his offense at will and control the fight with ease on those occasions.
When Miranda was motivated, usually after catching a few good shots from Vegas, he would fire back with a flurry of big shots and drive Vegas to the ropes where he would try to cover up and wait out Miranda’s attacks.
In the 1st round, Miranda started off slowly, jabbing and holding back on his power shots. Vegas looked timid as if he was waiting to be bombed out at any second by Miranda. When the attack never came, a now brave looking Vegas attacked Miranda with nice right hands in the last minute of the round.
Miranda came out with vengeance in mind in the 2nd round, immediately firing off a huge salvo of power shots. Vegas, however, stood his ground and fired back with his own shots, though not nearly as often as the shots that Miranda was throwing. Miranda quickly backed Vegas up into the corner with a series of huge right hands to the head. Once he had him there, Miranda teed off with big power shots until the round ended.
In the 3rd, Miranda greeted Vegas with a powerful right hand at the start of the round and then hammered him with two more chopping right hands to send him down. It was like Miranda was chopping down a tree, and I wasn’t surprised that Vegas had gone down because the shots that he was hit with were mammoth punches.
After the action resumed, Vegas landed a right hand but was immediately tagged with another big right hand from Miranda. Then for some bizarre reason, Vegas turned his back on Miranda and was promptly tagged with a left hook from Miranda.
The referee immediately gave Miranda a warning, but it seems that the person he should have been warning is Vegas for turning his back on Miranda and practically inviting him to hit him. Vegas would continue to take heavy shots for the remainder of the round, but he fought back well, answering with hard right hands.
By the end of the round, Vegas was looking really confident as if he was under the impression that he was getting back into the fight. Miranda seemed to sense this and began throwing even harder shots, bullying Vegas around the ring and then dropping him with a left uppercut to the head near the end of the round.
In the 4th round, Miranda toyed with Vegas through much of the round, measuring him for big right hands and then dropping the bombs on him again and again. Like in the other rounds, Vegas foolishly went to the ropes and tried to cover up. By this point in the fight, Vegas was doing very little in the fight, only covering up from Miranda’s huge shots.
In the 5th round, the one-sided beating continued further as Vegas once again resumed his place against the ropes, getting hammered with Miranda’s howitzer right hands. Miranda looked positively gleeful as he continued measuring him for right hands.
Finally, after hurting Vegas with a big looping right hand to the head, Miranda bludgeoned him with three more right hands and then left, causing referee Ken Curtis to step in and stop the fight at 2:31 of the round as Vegas sagged downward on the ropes.