LEONILO MIRANDA vs ORLANDO CRUZ

ShoBox features two unbeaten southpaw featherweights each seeking to make the big breakthrough in 2009 when Mexico’s Leonilo Miranda faces Puerto Rican Orlando Cruz in a 10-rounder.

These Mexico vs Puerto Rico matches seldom fail to please and have been a wining formula on Tuto Zabala Jr.’s shows on Telemundo.

I haven’t seen Miranda but his manager tells me that his man is a boxer/puncher with an “active” jab.

Cruz was featured on Friday Night Fights last June when he was surprisingly held to a draw by veteran Jesus Perez in a four-rounder. Cruz looked quite clever and speedy but he seemed to me to be pacing himself too much, as if he was in a longer fight, and ended up with the draw in a fight he could — probably should — have won.

I also had a look at Cruz on site at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas when he stopped a Mexican fighter named Alberto Cepeda, who was retired by his corner after two rounds. My notes remind me that Cruz played with Cepeda and “pasted him at will”.

Cruz has comfortably won his last two bouts, one of them a 12-rounder against Nicaraguan Carlos Guevara. His best win was over fellow-Puerto Rican Juan Ramon Cruz, who is a solid fighter. He seems to have handled his namesake fairly easily, and this alone would suggest that Cruz is a much better fighter than he looked in the drawn bout with Jesus Perez.

Miranda’s record is striking, with 30 wins in a row, 28 by KO, and in his last fight he knocked out the badly faded Cruz Carbajal in eight rounds.

Sometimes fighters with records such as this have the skills to go with the statistics, sometimes not, a case being Julio Cesar Garcia, who compiled a long winning run in Mexico but proved to be a false alarm, with truly awful performances against Troy Browning and Danny Perez in the U.S.

Cruz has a good amateur background, which includes boxing in the 2000 Olympics, where he lost very narrowly (11-10 on the electronic scoring) to an Algerian boxer. He was a bronze medallist in a tournament in Cuba (Miguel Cotto was one of his team-mates). This type of international amateur experience has to be respected.

Still, my feeling is that Miranda might have the edge in this fight. He is the taller fighter and going by the respective records he must be considered the harder hitter of the two men.

It isn’t surprising that the sportsbooks haven’t offered a line on the fight, because these are two boxers who simply are not very well known in the States. This, though, is a big opportunity for them both and I am expecting a competitive fight in the ShoBox tradition. I get the feeling that Miranda is going to win this, probably by decision, but as I haven’t seen him I don’t have a really strong feeling about the fight.