By Rick Reeno

The rumors have been circulating for weeks. Did Edison Miranda drop Chad Dawson during a sparring session? According to Miranda's trainer, Miguel Diaz, the incident happened.

For a few weeks in Las Vegas, the two fighters were training together for their respective fights on September 8th.  

Dawson was getting prepared for a fight with WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, and Miranda was scheduled to head over to London to face British light heavyweight Tony Bellew. Both Dawson and Miranda suffered TKO defeats.

During one of their final sparring sessions, Miranda caught Dawson with a hard three punch combination. Dawson went down hard, says Diaz, but eventually got to his feet. They sparred for ten rounds a day or two later, without incident.

"It's very simple. That day we were prepared for a ten round workout. In the ninth round, Miranda executed something that I've been telling him to do the whole workout -  left [hand], right hand, left hook - and he knocked him down. It was devastating for me, because I don't want to see something like that, but it happened. He was hurt. He tried to get up, he went down again, and got up. In fact, I screamed to Rafael Garcia 'come and help him,'" Diaz told BoxingScene.com.