David Benavidez may have made the wrong move by choosing to face the highly skilled WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight champion David Morrell on February 1st.
Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) has brushed off Cuban Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) over the past two years, ignoring his calls and focusing on easier fights against old holdovers David Lemieux, Caleb Plant and Demetrius Andrade.
After Morrell Jr.’s last fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3rd, which was not one of his best, Benavidez and his father/trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr., finally agreed to face him. Per Salvador Rodriguez op XBenavidez-Morrell will fight on Feb. 1 at a PBC show at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
It’s too late for Benavidez to change his mind and not go through with the Morrell fight, because if he loses, he can forget about the massive payday against the winner of the Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2 rematch in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, making a goldmine out of the fight.
Benavidez needs to change his style for Morrell
David Benavidez looked much worse in his debut at 175 against the former light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15. In that fight, which Benavidez won by a 12-round unanimous decision, he faded after six rounds and took a lot of punishment in the last six rounds, more than in any other fight of his career.
The final punch stats
Benavidez landed 270 of 749 punches for a 36% connection rate. For his part, Gvozdyk landed 223 of 675 for 33%. Gvozdyk landed the much harder punches and was the stronger fighter down the stretch against an exhausted Benavidez.
Benavidez made excuses after the fight and blamed his disappointing performance on hand injuries. But fans didn’t believe him because he fought the same way at 168, but his opposition was much smaller than him and not as talented as Gvozdyk.
As of 2013, he’s beaten ham and eggs for a full decade without stepping up against fighters his own size. He moved up to 175 to fight talents like Dmitri Bivol, Artur Beterbiev and Joshua Buatsi.
In the Gvozdyk fight, Benavidez showed that his power hasn’t moved up with him from the 168-lb division and that his fighting style of throwing machine gun combinations wouldn’t work for him against light heavyweight. Indeed, if Benavidez doesn’t change that style soon, he’s going to be an invalid, heading to Palookaville wondering what happened to his once promising career.
Morrell hits Benavidez too hard
David Morrell is clearly the biggest puncher in the 175-lb division today and possesses too much power for Benavidez to try to fight him the same way he did at 168 or in his fight against Gvozdyk.
Benavidez took a bad beating in the Gvozdyk match and was badly marked after the fight. He looked like he was in a torture chamber after that fight. For a volume puncher with below average power like Benavidez, it would be risky for him to fight Morrell and try to outwork him.
The risk of being knocked out by Morrell is too high, and it won’t end well for him. Benavidez’s style is made to order for Morrell. His last opponent, Kalajdzic, had a more difficult style for Morrell due to his counter striking and power. Kalajdzic is one of the biggest punchers in the 175-lb division and has more power than Benavidez. Morrell had to be careful with him because of the counter shots.
