David Benavidez may have made the wrong move by choosing to face highly skilled WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight champion David Morrell on February 1st.
Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) had been swerving the Cuban Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) for the last two years, ignoring his callouts and focusing on taking easier fights against old relics, David Lemieux, Caleb Plant, and Demetrius Andrade.
After Morrell Jr’s last fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3rd, which wasn’t one of his better ones, Benavidez and his dad/trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr., finally relented to face him. Per Salvador Rodriguez on X, Benavidez-Morrell will be fighting on a PBC show on February 1st at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
It’s too late for Benavidez to change his mind and not go through with the fight against Morrell because if he loses, he can forget about the massive payday fighting the winner of the Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2 rematch in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and making a goldmine from the fight.
Benavidez Must Change His Style For Morrell
David Benavidez looked far worse in his debut at 175 against former light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15th. In that fight in which Benavidez won by a 12-round unanimous decision, he faded after six rounds and took a lot of punishment in the final six rounds, more than in other fight of his career.
The final punch stats
Benavidez landed 270 of 749 punches for a 36% connect 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-looking Benavidez.
Benavidez made excuses after the fight, blaming his disappointing performance on hand injuries. But fans didn’t believe him because he’d been fighting the same way at 168, but his opposition was much smaller than him and not as talented as Gvozdyk.
From 2013, he beat ham and eggers for a full decade without stepping up against fighters his own size. He moved up to 175 to fight talents like Dmitry Bivol, Artur Beterbiev, and Joshua Buatsi.
In the Gvozdyk fight, Benavidez showed that his power hadn’t traveled up with him from the 168-lb division and that his fighting style of throwing machine gun combinations wouldn’t work for him at light heavyweight. Indeed, if Benavidez doesn’t change that style soon, he’s going to be null & void, heading to Palookaville, wondering what happened to his once-promising career.
Morrell Hits Too Hard For Benavidez
David Morrell is clearly the biggest puncher in the 175-lb division today and possesses too much power for Benavidez to try fighting the same way against him that he’d done at 168 or in his fight against Gvozdyk.
Benavidez got a bad beating in the Gvozdyk match and was badly marked up after the fight. He looked like he’d been 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 attempt to outwork him.
The risk of getting knocked out by Morrell is too high, and it wouldn’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 because of his counter-punching 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.
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