Quote Originally Posted by amat
I'm honestly surprised so many people are so high on Miranda. IMO, he's even more rough around the edges then Lacy was. An active fighter with a warriors mentality and mean punching power. And picking him to beat JT is something I thought barely anyone would do.

I like Kelly's chances. Pavlik has a mean right hand a sneaky left hook. Pretty good fighter and a very astute puncher. He knows how to punch and he doesn't waste to much in doing so. Very straight puncher and very accurate, always a deadly combination.

Miranda on the other hand is just an animal. Not all right around the edges, he's not exactly patient but the guy is one of the more intimidating fighters in the game. Pavlik is going to have to be all there mentally and not be scared of Miranda if he wants to win the fight. He can't be moving backwards if he wants to beat Miranda, doesn't mean he has to be moving forward but he can't fight off the back foot. Easier said then done but you're not going to expose any holes in Miranda's defense backpeddling and that has been something that I've seen Pavlik do a couple times. More of a lazy habit imo, but if he does it against Miranda he better watch the fwock out.

He has the tools to beat Miranda, and it could very well happen. But to do it he needs to stand his ground, sneak that left hook in on Miranda, follow up and then circle around. Or do something to that extent. A lot of people say that you beat Miranda by keeping him outside, well I don't totally agree. He has a very tight defense on the outside, it's basically a shell it's when he is moving in and looking to make something happen where his defense opens up and that's where Pavlik is going to have to do his work. And his arsenal of punches seem to be made for a guy like Miranda but there is always that X factor of a huge Colombian power house coming at you and whether or not you can keep your poise. But if he can, if he can stay composed and catch Miranda in transition even if it means abandoning the jab a bit, laying a trap for Miranda to open up and come inside then so be it. Again, the X factor. But if he can, it very well could be a frustrating night for Miranda. And that's not at all far fetched. I mean the one time Green opened up he dropped Miranda as Miranda was moving forward. Howard Eastman, caught Miranda moving forward. The blue print is there just no one could execute it. Pavlik is a guy with that capability.

But on the flipside, if Pavlik loses, he loses big in this one. Miranda's blows are like missals in the air, they may be a bit loopy and they may take a while to get there but they bang hard.

I'm going to go ahead and predict a Miranda KO but I wouldn't be surprised to see it go the other way. Like I said Miranda has more then enough tools to beat him, it's knowing how to use them that counts. And big fight inexperience could cost him here. A win for either fighter is huge imo.

This is one I'm going to be able to catch. Glad too, I know there has been talk in Ohio about this one for years, even before both were real big. Should be fun. I'm a lot more excited for this then I am Allen Green - Edison Miranda yet when that fight got signed it seems people were more excited. I never saw it in Allan.
You have some good points here. But a few things... one, Miranda got dropped by Green when he was actually moving backwards (more of a skip) to avoid a punch. He was off balance and got hit with a tremendous left hook. He was never hurt.
Against Eastman he was hurt. But again, he was not moving forward. They were in the middle of the ring and Eastman came over the top with a good right when Miranda's defense was not there. He has fixed this problem since that fight.

The other X factor is that Pavlik has looked no more than decent in his past fights against lower level guys. If he looked only decent against this level of opposition, how is he going to look against one of the p4p hardest punchers and most aggressive guys in the sport? If he would have look amazing in his last few fights I would say he has a chance at this level. But since he hasn't shined at the lower level, I got a feeling he will fail miserably against the top level of fighters (imo Miranda is the top at middleweight).