Colombian Dionisio Miranda (21-7-2, 18 K0s) will step in to face Chicago’s Don “Da Bomb” George (22-2-1, 19 KOs) in the 10-round super middleweight co-main event of the ESPN Friday Night Fights 2012 series finale (10 PM Eastern on ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ESPN3) presented by Warriors Boxing and Tony Holden Productions, scheduled for Friday, August 17, at the Buffalo Run Casino in Miami, Oklahoma.
George’s original opponent, Adonis Stevenson, has been forced to pull out of their 12-round elimination bout with a hand injury.
The other 10-round co-main event battle between top junior middleweight contender “King” Carlos Molina (19-5-2, 6 KOs) and Miami’s Damian “Devo” Frias (19-4-1, 10 KOs) will go on as scheduled.
Miranda, a veteran who has notable wins over Lujuan Simon and Sebastian Demers, has been on the short end of competitive big fights with Peter Quillen, Roman Karmazin and Renan St Juste. A big puncher who comes to fight, he could create problems for George.
“Adonis Stevenson injured his left hand in sparring last Friday,” said a disappointed Yvon Michel, President of Groupe Yvon Michel, Stevenson’s promoters. “The next day he went to see a doctor who diagnosed a severe bruise and major swelling. Adonis was not able to close his hand and make a fist. Treatments were done in hopes of improvement but there was not enough progress and under the doctor’s advice it was decided to pull Adonis out of his fight.”
According to Michel, Stevenson is now in Montreal receiving treatment. The International Boxing Federation (IBF) super middleweight title eliminator will be rescheduled for early this fall.
“Team Stevenson and GYM are very disappointed for all the inconvenience this situation has created for ESPN and their programming director, Doug Loughrey, to Warriors Boxing and their president, Leon Margules, and to Tony Holden and the Buffalo Run Casino and Resort. Everyone was so cooperative to make this fight happen. And to all our partners in Canada who were diligently working to program and sell this fight on PPV on short notice, and also to Team George who has carefully prepared for this important encounter. We wish him good luck on Friday.”
Warriors Boxing President, Leon Margules, says he’s disappointed by this turn of events, but is confident the event will still generate action worthy of the finale of the outstanding 2012 season of Friday Night Fights.
“Donovan is obviously disappointed by this, but we all know these things happen in boxing. We wish Adonis Stevenson a speedy recovery. But what we still have in this event is a compelling junior middleweight fight between two top-tier guys with reputations for pulling off upsets and we’ve got Donovan George against a Columbian slugger with a difficult style to figure out. So, as sad as we all are about what happened, we still have a good challenge in front of us this Friday and we’ll be ready.”
###
Tickets are priced from $35.00 to $65.00 and are available at the Buffalo Run Casino Box Office or online at stubwire.com.
