As David Benavidez sees it, a fight with the dangerous David Morrell Jnr can set him apart from other fighters and help put him on course to build a lasting boxing legacy.
Benavidez, 27, of Phoenix, will headline a PBC pay-per-view card against Morrell in a light heavyweight contest at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on February 1.
Ahead of what is expected to be a slugfest, Benavidez, 29-0 (24 KOs), told Fight Hype that he believes Morrell, 11-0 (9 KOs), is an opponent who can help him leave an indelible mark in the sport.
“I know it’s gonna be a good fight, and I know this is gonna separate me from everybody else,” Benavidez said. “I wanna solidify myself down [with] the best. So, like I said, I just wanna do it myself. I want the best fights possible. If I can’t get Canelo, if I can’t get Beterbiev or Bivol, this is the next-best way.
“We just did a face-off and then we started just, you know, a little bit of shit-talking, but that’s all it is. You know, I wanna let him know where I’m at, where my mentality is right now, and that’s for what’s good, what’s to come February 1.”
Benavidez and Morrell have been engaged in trash talk since the announcement of their fight, with the former vowing to break his opponent’s mouth. Benavidez says he’s ready to teach Morrell a lesson by knock him out.
“I just know that when it comes to me and him, at the end of the day, it’s only gonna be us in that ring,” Benavidez said. “But I’m here to show him that I’ll keep up this energy and he’s in for a long, long night. When I told him I’ll break his mouth, that’s really what I wanna do.
“I’m not playing around. I’m going in there and that’s exactly what it ends up doing. I can’t remember word for word what it was, but you guys have heard him. You guys have seen that he’s been saying that he’s gonna knock me out and I’m not nothing, this and that. So now it’s time to live up to that.”
The war of words didn’t prevent Benavidez from expressing his appreciation of Morrell as one of the best in the sport at 175lbs.
“But we’re gonna put on against a really good fighter, a really good technical fighter,” he said. “He won a 168lbs WBA title and he has a lot of skills. When I accepted this fight, I knew it was a dangerous fight. There were way easier fights, but I don’t want these fights. I want the toughest fights, too.”
Each fighter is preparing to go into the clash on the back of a single fight at 175lbs this year. While Benavidez recorded a 12-round unanimous decision victory over Oleksandr Gvozdyk in June, Morrell beat Radivoie Kalajdzic via unanimous decision over 12 rounds in August.
According to Benavidez, he would be ready to deal with any test that Morrell could present to him.
“I mean, what I think about is making sure my defense comes up as soon as my punches go out so I don’t gotta worry about him,” Benavidez said. ”But every fighter is dangerous. Every fighter has good power, and as you can see, he has 11 fights, nine knockouts, so the power is definitely there.”
Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist with a specialty in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column titled “From The Ringside” in his native Ghana for years. He can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye and through email at [email protected].
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