David Benavidez may have made the wrong move by choosing to face highly rated WBA “regular” lightweight champion David Morrell on February 1st.
Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) had sidelined the Cuban Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) for the past 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 3, which was not one of his best, Benavidez and his father/trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr. For Salvador Rodriguez on XBenavidez-Morrell will fight on a PBC show on February 1 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 make a gold mine out of the fight.
Benavidez must change his style for Morrell
David Benavidez looked much worse in his debut at 175 against the former lightweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk on the 15th of June. 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 last six rounds, more than in any other fight of his career.
The latest punch statistics
Benavidez landed 270 of 749 punches for a 36% connection rate. For his part, Gvozdyk landed 223 of 675 for 33%. Gvozdyk landed much harder punches and was the stronger fighter down the stretch against a seemingly exhausted Benavidez.
Benavidez apologized after the fight, blaming his disappointing performance on hand injuries. But the fans didn’t believe him because he had fought the same way at 168, but his opposition was much smaller than him and not as talented as Gvozdyk.
As of 2013, he has been beating ham and eggers for an entire decade without losing 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 with him from the 168 lb division and that his throwing machine gun combination fighting style didn’t work for him at lightweight. Indeed, if Benavidez doesn’t change that style soon, he’ll be null and void, walking into Palookaville, wondering what happened to his 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 to fight against himself as he did at 168 or in his fight against Gvozdyk.
Benavidez had a bad fight in the Gvozdyk match and was badly marked after the fight. He looked like he had 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 try to work.
The risk of being defeated by Morrell is too high, and it will not end well for him. Benavidez’s style is made to order for Morrell. His last opponent, Kalajdzic, had a more difficult style for Morrell due to 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.
