By Ryan Songalia
When a fighter suffers his first knockout loss, pundits pay close attention to his first bout back under an intense magnifying glass. Edison Miranda knows that when he steps through the ropes at Hollywood, FL's Hard Rock Casino on October 30 against Costa Rican Henry Porras, people will be asking whether Pantera is ready to regroup, or if he's too broken to be fixed once again.
"I let down my fans that night," Miranda, 28-2 (24 KO), admits about his stoppage loss against now-Middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in May. "I am hungry to be back on top where I belong. I fell down. But it is not how hard you fall that matters, it is how you get up."
In the interim after suffering his second career defeat, Miranda went home to Colombia to put his life back in perspective. "I had not taken time away from the gym for almost a year. It was a nice break for me just to relax. After a couple of months I returned to Puerto Rico, my other home, and again just relaxed and spent time with close friends. I started getting back into shape and training about 10 weeks before this upcoming fight."
That's when Miranda decided that he'd had enough of fraternizing with old chums. It was time to fight. Before moving forward, there were still conditions needing to be corrected. Miranda's primary explanation for his flat performance against Pavlik was the weight; He claimed he could no longer make the middleweight limit.
"In my last couple of fights I feel my strength was not what it should have been in the ring," says Miranda. "My body has changed over the past few years and making 160 pounds was getting harder and harder. I feel more natural at 168 pounds right now. I don't have to drain myself to make the weight and I think people will see more power from my punches." Miranda related that his performance in sparring has improved with the weight difference.
Miranda says that his technique had been a work in progress for some time, but that he feels no need to switch his conditioning regimine. "My training rituals are still the same. We are working on some defensive skills and moving around the ring."
We may find out just how much Miranda has left soon. Miranda stated that he is willing to take any fight at 168 after this perfunctory tune-up bout. The super middleweight division offers clashes with Mikkel Kessler, Jeff Lacy, Joe Calzaghe, Lucian Bute, and many other exciting possibilities. The division can only benefit from Pantera's colorful personality.
For now, those fights have to wait. Henry Porras has instead been placed in front of Miranda, a fighter whose record of 33-6-1 (25 KO) cites limited success outside of his home country. Says Miranda of his foe, "I don't care about Henry Porras. I will soon know what he looks like laying on his back."
Confidence and audacity, two traits that have long typified the reserved, yet insightful pugilist. Miranda says that even after the loss to Pavlik, his confidence had never wained. "I had never doubted my abilities and never lost confidence. I made a mistake in my training, it was not my abilities that lost the fight."
Greg Wantman, Miranda's co-manager (along with Steve Benbasbat), offered his own take on why events went the way they did against Pavlik.
"He thought Kelly was going to be an easier fight than Allan Green and therefore took a little well-deserved break and did not train 100 percent for the fight. As a result, his metabolism was not at it's peak, and those final 8-10 pounds that had always come off easily for him in the past were not coming off. He did not eat or drink the final three days before the fight and broke into a fever the night before. He kept quiet about this and thought even a 50%-75% Edison would still be enough to beat Kelly Pavlik. Obviously he was wrong and Kelly surprised a lot of people and fought a great fight."
Yet even still, despite Miranda's outwardly assured demeanor, many still are in doubt regarding Miranda's future prospects. Some say he gets hit too much, that he doesn't fight well in reverse, that he can't deal with a boxer.
"Some people may think I have something to prove, and that is OK." What people want Miranda to "prove" is that the Pavlik misadventure was an abberration, that outstanding circumstances were the reason that Miranda's time bomb failed to explode.
How Edison Miranda really feels is deeply encrypted inside of his guarded interior. Like all other human beings, Miranda bleeds, he feels pain, he is a vulnerable soul. Now that Miranda has been revealed as a mortal, he will be facing galvanized opposition hoping to uncover the same flaws other men have discovered.
Isn't this usually when we find out what a fighter is made of?
Any questions or comments? Send them to me at mc_rson@yahoo.com
