WBC ‘regular’ light heavyweight champion David Morrell has confirmed on social media that he’s in discussions for a clash against WBC interim champ David Benavidez.
If the two unbeaten newbie 175-pounders, Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) and Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs), agree to a deal, the clash could happen in December. That would put the winner in the slot to fight for the undisputed championship in 2025 against the winner of the October 12th contest between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.
Morrell, 26, is the younger, more powerful, and technically gifted fighter than Benavidez, but he lacks the experience he possesses. If the Cuban Morrell adapts his game to improve his low punch output, Benavidez will likely lose this fight by knockout. The difference in power between Morrell and Benavidez is huge. I guess Benavidez didn’t eat his Wheaties when he ws growing up.
Morrell is a much better puncher than him and has a style more suited to the 175-lb division. The 27-year-old Benavidez is a fish out of water at light heavyweight and no longer the fearsome puncher he’d been at 168, where he had a size advantage over his smaller prey.
If Benavidez loses to Morrell, it would confirm in fans’ minds that he was always just a weight bully from day one. He would be seen as another example of a young fighter gaming the system by fighting in a weight class below their size.
Benavidez has been a pro game longer, and he’s beaten Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Demetrius Andrade, Caleb Plant, David Lemieux, and Anthony Dirrell.
Benavidez’s high-volume offense would potentially give Morrell problems because he throws a lot of punches in a machine gun style, overwhelming his opponents with shots. In Benavidez’s debut at 175 last June against Gvozdyk, he defeated him with his volume.
Gvozdyk was the bigger puncher and landed the cleaner shots in every round, but the high output from Benavidez was enough to get the win.
Morrell punches much harder than Benavidez, but he may have problems with his volume if he doesn’t improve that part of his game by the time they fight. That’s the thing that was missing from Morrell in his recent fight against
Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3rd on the undercard of Terence Crawford vs. Israil Madrimov at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. Morrell had the former Artur Beterbiev knockout victim Kalajdzic hurt several times in their 12-round fight but couldn’t put him away because he was focusing on throwing single punches instead of unloading a barrage of shots in the way that Benavidez would have done.
If Morrell had more experience and had adapted his game, he would have easily knocked Kalajdzic out because he was early and often in that fight.
The shots that Morrell had him with appeared harder than the blows that the knockout artist Beterbiev had hit him with five years earlier in their clash in 2019. The difference was that Beterbiev didn’t step back and let up once he had Kalajdzic in trouble the way Morrell did.
Read the full article here
