Diego Pacheco believes regular WBA lightweight champion David Morrell will be David Benavidez’s “toughest opponent” when they meet on February 1 in the main event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Pacheco, a super middleweight contender who trains with Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs), predicts he will knock out Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) and come out on top. He compares Morrell to Caleb Plant, which is an odd comparison, and sees Benavidez starting slow but then coming on.
The threat of the body
If Benavidez gets hit by Morrell as much as Plant, he will be in trouble in this fight. Morrell’s power is very different from Plant’s, and he has to target his weak midsection to shut him down.
Like all fighters, Benavidez has a weakness, which is taking body shots. Morrell will probably get in his thick late elvis gut to mark an arrest of the body. That’s Benavidez’s kryptonite – taking hard hits to his bread.
“David Morrell is a guy you can’t take lightly. He’s up there for a reason, and one of the best Cubans right now,” said Diego Pacheco to Sean ZittelWe’re talking about David Morrell, who faces WBC interim lightweight champion David Benavidez on February 1st.
“I feel like David (Benavidez) is a monster. He doesn’t let anyone get him. When he gets in there, he goes for the kill. Of course, I think Morrell will be his toughest opponent, but I still see that David comes out on top. He (Morrell) has a good jab, he’s a good fighter, and he keeps his distance really well.
“I feel like he’s going to make it tough for David in the early rounds. But as we saw with Caleb Plant, he was doing a good job of boxing in the early rounds when he fought David. But David has the chip on his shoulder where he comes in. Even in the clinches, he’s still taking punches.
Using Caleb Plant as his reason why Benavidez defeats Morrell doesn’t make a lot of sense. Plant is a smaller, older fighter with no power, and is a completely different fighter than the 27-year-old Morrell. Plant was never a puncher and was knocked out by Canelo Alvarez. His style is different from Morrell.
“I feel like when you fight a guy like David, and he’s always coming forward, no matter what you do, it makes it hard to keep the same game plan and hold on. When you have a monster like him, you throw big punches , throwing punches in bunches, it’s hard,” Pacheco said.
That habit of Benavidez walking forward resulted in him eating a lot of head shots against Oleksandr Gvozdyk in their fight last year on June 15th. If Gvozdyk had targeted Benavidez’s body, instead of his concrete head block, he could have scored a stoppage.
When he finally went to Benavidez’s body in the 12th, he hurt him. Benavidez’s weak midsection and the way he leans in a Fury-esque style leaves his body open. Pachecho praised Benavidez’s ability to avoid head shots, saying he ducks.
True, but it leaves his midsection unprotected, which is the only area where he is weak. He might not be able to handle Morrell’s punches to the body or head because he hits harder than anyone he’s faced before and is an excellent counter-puncher.
“His defense is crazy. He’s so straight. He’s really good at punching back. Every pitch, he’s getting better. He’s learning,” Pacheco said.
His first opponents passed
Benavidez’s defense is not great. If you saw his last two fights against Oleksandr Gvozdyk and Demetrius Andrade, he was just walking in Robocop style, blocking shots with his head, outworking those two older fighters. Gvozdyk is 37 and Andrade is 36.
No man is close to what he once was a decade ago. It would be the same if Benavidez was on the wrong side of 30, going up against a younger fighter. It wouldn’t do any good.
