World middleweight title · 2006
Arthur Abraham's victory, and the argument it left behind
Edison Miranda broke Arthur Abraham's jaw in two places in the fourth round. Abraham fought on for eight more, won clearly, and left behind a question about whether he should have been allowed to.
Arthur Abraham was born in Yerevan, in Armenia, and moved to Germany at 15. He won the IBF middleweight title in December 2005, in Leipzig, stopping Kingsley Ikeke in the fifth round after Jermain Taylor gave up the belt. He was unbeaten.
So was his challenger at the Rittal Arena in Wetzlar on 23 September 2006. Edison Miranda, a Colombian known as Pantera, the panther, was 26–0.
The fourth round
Late in the fourth round, Miranda landed a right hand that broke Abraham's jaw. It was broken in two places.
In the fifth Miranda deliberately headbutted him in a clinch, and Abraham's mouth began to bleed. The ringside doctor examined him. According to one account of the night, the first view was that he was too badly hurt to go on. A second examination allowed the fight to continue.
That decision is the argument the fight left behind. A champion with a jaw broken in two places was allowed to box on for another eight rounds.
Eight more rounds
In the corner, his trainer, Ulli Wegner, kept telling him what he needed to hear: "You can do it -- try to close your mouth -- you can do it."
Abraham did more than survive. He avoided much of what Miranda threw and fired back periodically with hard shots, at times knocking Miranda into the ropes.
Miranda made things harder for himself. He lost two points for the headbutt in the fifth, two more for low blows in the seventh, and another for a low blow in the 11th. The referee, Randy Neumann, was blunt in the seventh: "Stop hitting him in the balls!"
The verdict
All three judges scored it for Abraham: 114–109, 115–109 and 116–109. Miranda had been docked five points, but even without the deductions he would have lost.
Afterwards, Abraham needed surgery. His jaw was repaired with titanium plates held in place by 22 screws.
The two met again in June 2008, at a catchweight with no title at stake. Abraham knocked Miranda down three times and stopped him in the fourth. By then, Miranda had also been stopped by Kelly Pavlik.
The first fight is the one people remember, for both reasons: the courage it took to go on, and the question of whether anyone should have let him.