David Benavidez spoke loudly during his time at the podium during their first press conference, vowing to break the mouth of David Morrell for questioning his courage in recent years. The two fighters met today to begin promoting their February 1st fight on PBC Prime Video PPV in Las Vegas.
Morrell, 26, got on Benavidez’s nerves by repeatedly fighting him for not stepping up to fight him. Benavidez felt it was more important to fight other guys like David Lemieux, Ronald Ellis, Demetrius Andrade and Caleb Plant.
The idea was that Benavidez had to remain undefeated to get the Canelo Alvarez megafight. That fight never materialized, so Benavidez is now ready to take on risky fights against Morrell and the winner of the Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2 rematch if he gets that far.
Interestingly, Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) claimed that he could not understand what the Cuban-born Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) said when he spoke to him in Spanish. Benavidez speaks Spanish, but the accent is a little different than in Cuba, so he couldn’t understand Morrell.
Benavidez will challenge Morrell for his WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight title in a loaded card at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The winner will be in a position to fight for the undisputed 175-lb championship in the second half of 2025 against Artur Beterbiev or whoever holds the four belts.
“This guy disrespected me. I’m going to break his mouth so he has something to remember me by,” David Benavidez said during today’s kickoff press conference, blasting David Morrell for criticizing him over the past two to three years for refusing to fight him until after his recent poor performance.
If Benavidez had agreed to fight Morrell years ago, he wouldn’t have been taunted by him. Benavidez felt it was more important to fight guys like Lemieux, Plant and Andrade rather than Morrell. There must have been some fear on Benavidez’s part not to agree to fight him until he looked unimpressive in his recent fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic.
Morrell still won that fight with a lopsided 12-round decision on August 3, but it wasn’t the type of performance fans were used to seeing from him. Morrell looked better than Benavidez until that fight.
“He has been talking about me for about 2-3 years. Disrespect to me, my father, my brother…so now you want to take it personally with me. So, I’m personally going to break his mouth so he has something to remember me by.”
