Should Miranda Retire?

By Boxing News - 05/19/2009 - Comments

By Jason Kim: After losing for the 4th time since 2006, once promising middleweight contender Edison Miranda (32-4, 28 KOs) finds himself practically at the journeyman’s status after being completely dominated by super middleweight contender Andre Ward last Saturday night in a one-sided unanimous decision loss at the Oracle Arena, in Oakland, California.

Before the fight, Miranda had promised how he was going to knock Ward out in the fight. However, Miranda only seemed to fight hard in several of the rounds, giving it a try in rounds one, two and six, before fading and doing little the rest of the way.

Indeed, it looked as if Miranda mentally gave up on himself after the 2nd round and only went through the motions through the rest of the fight. It didn’t look good for Miranda going into the fight, because he doesn’t have the best of boxing skills, isn’t particularly fast, and doesn’t have the size or elusiveness that Ward has going for him.

However, I did expect Miranda to fight as hard as he can and go down trying to score a knockout. Instead, Miranda just looked discouraged, and didn’t put the fire into his punches that he needed to put Ward in trouble.

Granted, Ward has a tough style to beat. He moves a lot laterally, likes to jab a lot and come in fast to fire off straight left hands and right hooks to the head. Ward’s style is a lot like a quicker version of Lucian Bute. But it’s not an unbeatable style by any means.

Miranda needed to after Ward continuously, make him back up until he runs out of real estate and then at that point Miranda could have hit him with his power shots. Instead, he only trotted after Ward at half speed and would let Ward grab him in a clinch whenever they were close.

In the end, Miranda didn’t have a plan ‘B’ to use when his first option didn’t work for him. The loss puts Miranda in a bad place, because he’s been beaten in consecutive years, losing once per year since 2006 with no real big wins over quality fighters during this time.

Miranda doesn’t want to fight at middleweight because of the struggle that he has to make to get down to the 160 pound weight limit, but I think that’s Miranda’s best option available short of retirement. Miranda doesn’t have the size or boxing skills needed to compete against the excellent fighters in the super middleweight division and he’s also much too small to fight at light heavyweight.

I don’t care if he can make that weight. Miranda is too small and have the skills needed to beat the best in that division. What Miranda needs to do is go back to middleweight where his power makes him much more of a threat against the smaller fighters in that division.

I still don’t think he can compete against champions like Arthur Abraham and Kelly Pavlik, but Miranda does have a punchers chance against Felix Sturm, who’s already been knocked out once in his career by Spaniard Javier Castillejo, an average puncher.

Even better than middleweight would be for Miranda to move down to light middleweight (154), where he would give fighters like Vernon Forrest, Alfredo Angulo and Sergio Martinez a lot of problems with his heavy hands. If Miranda decides to stay at super middleweight or light heavyweight then he might as well retire, because Miranda won’t have the size or skills needed to be a champion at those weights.



Comments are closed.