By Dan Ambrose: Colombian knockout artist Dionisio Miranda (21-7-2, 18 KO’s) will face the hard hitting #11 IBF Don George (22-2-1, 19 KO’s) this Friday night on Friday Night Fights in a 10 round scheduled bout on ESPN2 at the Buffalo Run Casino, in Miami, Oklahoma.
According to Dan Rafael at ESPN, Miranda, 30, is a replacement for #2 IBF Adonis Stevenson, who had to pull out of the fight on short notice after injuring his left hand during a recent sparring session. The injury not only will keep the 34-year-old Stevenson out of this fight, but it will also ruin his chances of trying to become the mandatory challenger for IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch. There’s still an outside chance that Stevenson could still get selected for Froch’s next fight in November, as his promoter Eddie Hearn is still actively looking for an opponent for him. However, given Stevenson’s huge power, southpaw stance and blinding hand speed, it’s not likely that Hearn is going to do Stevenson any favors by selecting him for Froch’s next fight.
Miranda is more of a journeyman at this point than an actual contender. He lost his last fight against Avtandil Khurtsidze by a 1st round knockout last June, and he’s been beaten in five out of his last eight fights. That’s pretty terrible. You usually don’t see a fighter with a rotten record like that fighting in an eliminator bout like this, but at this point the International Boxing Federation is probably pretty desperate because pretty much all the top contenders said no to fighting Stevenson before this. The IBF kept working their way down the line until they got to George. The odds of finding someone ranked #12 to #15 to fight George on short notice was probably slim and none.
Miranda’s best victories of his career have come against Sebastian Demers and Lajuan Simon. In June of 2008, Miranda kind of exposed Peter Quillin when he badly staggered him and him hurt in a 10 round decision loss for Miranda. Although he lost, he really punished Quillin with power shots and made him look very beatable. That was by far the worst performance of Quillin’s career and it was all because of Miranda’s huge power.
George can hit hard too, but he’s not the puncher Miranda is. He’s more of a heavy handed type of fighter that hits you with solid shots each time he lands. He’s not a one punch knockout guy like Miranda is. I suspect that George should win this fight as long he doesn’t get blasted out early from one of Miranda’s big shots.
Froch must be licking his lips at the thought of facing one of these guys because they’re a lot less dangerous than Adonis Stevenson is.
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