FanHouse Dan Goossen

Edison Miranda got back to his winning ways in a hurry, dominating Thursday night's clash of super middleweights with a first-round knockout over Francisco Sierra at the Tachi Palace Hotel & Casino in Lemoore, Calif.

In victory, accomplished at 2:16 of the round, the 168-pound Miranda scored his 29th knockout to improve to 33-4, successfully rebounding from May's unanimous decision loss to former Olympic gold medalist Andrew Ward.

The win also marked his first triumph under trainer Joe Goossen, brother of Miranda's promoter, Dan Goossen.

"When [Sierra] would throw a right hand, then he would drop his left hand, and I knew that that was the moment when I could throw my right hand and to land it," said Miranda, who has been training under Joe Goossen since June.

Paul Williams is pursuing a fight with either WBO junior middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk or Sergio Martinez on Dec. 5 in Atlantic City now that his scheduled bout for the same night, against Kelly Pavlik, has been canceled, his promoter, Dan Goossen, and his trainer and manager, George Peterson, told FanHouse.

Pavlik (35-1, 31 KOs) has a staph infection in his left finger that has plagued him for months, having led to the second postponement of his WBO and WBC middleweight title defenses against Williams (37-1, 27 KOs), a two-time welterweight and one-time junior middleweight champion.

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Edison Miranda has demonstrated punching power throughout most of his professional boxing career.

He won his first 26 fights, with the initial 21 coming by way of knockout, and an incredible 16 of those being in the first round. However, he has had mixed results ever since with only six wins in his last 10 fights, suffering a unanimous decision loss to former Olympic gold medalist Andre Ward in April.

LAS VEGAS – The last time I saw Andre Ward, he was ascending the medal platform in a warehouse-type building in a dingy part of Athens, Greece, to receive the Olympic gold medal in the light heavyweight division. I'd all but forgotten about him until Saturday morning, when I shared breakfast and chitchat with him, a dozen or so other scribes, and his promoter Dan Goossen.

And that is Ward's problem, which he and Goossen hope to address in earnest May 16 in Ward's hometown, Oakland, Calif., where he is scheduled to fight his first name opponent, the big-hitting (and big be hit) Colombian, Edison Miranda. Ward never seized the boxing public's psyche after Athens. He never cashed in that gold medal as others had before him, like, most notably, Oscar de la Hoya.

After all, another Olympics has come and gone and Ward doesn't have a world title to go with his 18-0 record. De La Hoya had multiple world titles by now.