ARTHUR ABRAHAM KO4 EDISON MIRANDA

Things were going so well for Edison Miranda, but then he got hit on the chin and — just like that — his rematch with Arthur Abraham ended disastrously with three knockdowns in the fourth round.

After the controversy over Abraham's win in his first fight with Miranda, in Germany, boxing needed an undisputed result in the encore. Abraham supplied it.

This time there was no room for doubt. It was a conclusive and spectacular ending to Showtime's much-anticipated main event.

Abraham, looking very strong at the catchweight contest’s weight limit of 166 pounds, seemed content to give away the early rounds, keeping his guard high, moving back, taking a lot of punches on the arms and gloves but not really throwing much himself.

He was, I thought, letting Mirada burn up some energy before starting to pick up his own punch output, but after three rounds I wondered whether he was going to leave it too late.

Abraham knew what he was doing, though — and what he was capable of doing.

Although Miranda was widely perceived as the puncher in the fight, Abraham, clearly, was very confident in his own punching power. We saw a glimpse of it in the third round when a right hand briefly buckled Miranda’s legs.

Abraham backed off some more, though, waiting for just the right moment, then struck again, in the fourth, as sudden as a streak of lightning in a dark sky, and the fight ended right there, even though two more knockdowns followed.

Miranda, supposedly much stronger and better able to absorb punishment in the super middleweight division, crashed out of the fight even more dramatically than he had in his 160-pound championship bout with Kelly Pavlik.

This was another devastating defeat for Miranda and one wonders if he can come back from this one. Although he got up from that first knockdown in round four, he had been hurt too badly, too early, in the round to have any chance of surviving. Abraham’s huge left hooks practically hurled Miranda to the canvas in the last two knockdowns.

The fight reminded me a lot of Abraham’s fights with Sebastian Demers and Wayne Elcock, which he won in the third and fifth rounds respectively.

In each of these bouts, Abraham was being outscored all too easily and his opponents grew in confidence — and then, before they knew it, they got caught by the sort of shots from which there is no coming back.

This ability to land punches that instantly alter the course of a contest will make Abraham a very intriguing opponent for Pavlik, who, of course, can punch rather well himself.

In the Abraham-Miranda preview, I suggested that a key factor in the bout would be whether Abraham would be able to match Miranda’s strength at 166 pounds. In fact it was Abraham who looked much the bigger, stronger man. Although Miranda was forcing the fight and throwing punches, he wasn’t getting many through to the target area.

Abraham seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to catch his man with a perfectly timed right hand, rather like a couple of other Europeans who came to America, Max Schmeling and Ingemar Johansson, waited to land their right hands against Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson respectively.

Once Abraham's right landed exactly the way he wanted it to, all of Miranda’s good work in the first three rounds was wiped out in an instant.

It was an emphatic statement by Abraham and the perfect answer to those who hinted that he would not be the same fighter without the so-called protection of boxing at home in Germany. When a boxer can hit as hard as Abraham, he doesn’t really need much protection.