Trainer Stephen Edwards feels that David Morrell doesn’t possess the ring IQ to defeat WBC interim light heavyweight champion David Benavidez in their fight on February 1st.
Stephen thinks that WBA ‘regular’ 175-lb champion Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) depends too much on his power and explosiveness and doesn’t have a bag of tricks he can rely on if that doesn’t work.
Edwards notes that Morrell had problems in his fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3rd in his debut at 175, but he was never at risk of losing. Indeed, Morrell dominated every round of the fight, but he took occasional big shots by Hot Rod, who can punch.
This guy has better power than Benavidez, and Morrell had to be cautious at times. Mostly, he was nailing Hot Rod at will with hard shots and had him hurt several times.
Stephen went up against ‘The Mexican Monster’ Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) when he defeated his fighter Caleb Plant last year on March 25, 2023, and it didn’t work out well for them. He came away from that fight impressed with Benavidez.
Plant was too weak and small for Benavidez, who looked like a cruiserweight inside the ring in that fight,
Morrell vs. Benavidez will headline on February 1 on PBC on Prime Video PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. This is the first fight of Benavidez’s 11-year career where he’s facing someone in a 50-50 fight that has a shot at beating him.
The closest he came thus far to an opponent that had a chance of beating him was in his last fight against Oleksandr Gvozdyk in his debut at 175 on June 15th. Benavidez got tired early in that fight and really got hammered by Gvozdyk from rounds 7 through 12.
“This is a fight that David Morrell can win, but I don’t know if he will win,” said Stephen Edwards to Fighthype about the David Benavidez vs. David Morrell fight on February 1. “He had problems with ‘Hot Rod,’ but he wasn’t losing.
“There’s a difference when you go back to your corner, and you don’t know if you’re up. I have to see what his adjustments are like when he’s not winning the fight or when the other guy is putting mental pressure on him where it’s starting to create a little bit of doubt.
“I’m very impressed with David Morrell, but he kind of relies on his forcefulness, his strength, and his size. He’s way too big to be fighting at 168. He’s a big guy. I’m very impressed with him, but a lot of the guys he was fighting were so much smaller than him where he doesn’t have to go into his bag of tricks to rely on other things like his IQ.
Like Benavidez, Morrell was too big for the 168-lb division, but he’s not fighting at 175. Both of them fought against smaller fighters at super middleweight. It wasn’t just Morrell who fought a lot of smaller guys. Benavidez was always bigger than his opponents during the 11 years he fought at 168.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t have it, but I haven’t seen it yet,” said Edwarda bout Morrell’s ring IQ. “I’m going to pick David Benavidez. I think his IQ is very underrated. His defense is underrated. People say he’s easy to hit, but when you fight like he fights, you’re going to get hit when you’re walking to a guy. Plus, he’s a big guy, but he catches a lot of punches.
“He’s really good at punching with you. He can counterpunch. He’s very conscious of his defense. He’s not in there letting his head get snapped back all over the place. When you see him get hit look at him real close. Even when he does get hit, his hands are up. So, the punches are going to have to go through his gloves. He’s deflecting a lot of the power,” said Edwards about Benavidez.
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