Dan Rafael believes WBC super middleweight champion David Benavidez has the upper hand in his fight against WBA “regular” champion David Morrell on February 1st.
Reporter Rafael feels that Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) has better punching and punching power than Cuban Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) in this match-up, which will be shown live on PBC on on Prime Video PPV. from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Benavidez’s weakness
Benavidez was hurt to the body in the 12th round by former WBC lightweight champion Gvozdyk. This was an area that looked weak during the fight as the Ukrainian stabbed him with punches and straight hands to the body.
Benavidez doesn’t take body shots like he can to his head, which is understandable because he’s soft with little muscle in his flabby midsection.
His ability to take headshots may be a product of having a large Andre ‘The Giant’ type head on a thin, pear-shaped torso, which allows him to take shots that would usually injure a typical fighter. Where Benavidez is weak is in the body. If Morrell attacks him there, he could get a body stop.
Experience factor
“I’m leaning towards Benavidez. I wouldn’t say because of pedigree because David Morrell has that deep amateur background from the Cuban system,” said Dan Rafael to Social boxing on the David Benavidez vs. David Morrell fight on February 1st.
“Both are in their prime athletically in terms of their age, although David Morrell has so much less fights because he had a late start. He left Cuba, and moved very quickly in the first days of his career. But he didn’t need 1000 fights because he had all that amateur experience, while Benavidez turned professional at 17. He was more of a work in progress to get to this point.
“When you look at the records, and you see that one guy has had less than 15 fights and one guy has had 30 fights, you think that guy is a lot older and has a lot more experience. That’s not the case. They’re both a lot closer in terms of age and experience, the amateurs that Morrell has a little compensation, while Benavidez has more professional experience.”
Morrell has more experience in the sport than Benavidez, who has had 148 rounds as a professional during his 12-year career.
Morrell has 54 rounds, but was 130-2 as an amateur in Cuba and has more rounds overall against better opposition than Benavidez has fought as a pro. Benavidez has fought limited fighters, mostly old ones like Gvozdyk, 36-year-old Demetrius Andrade, David Lemieux and Caleb Plant.
Chin and Power
“I’m leaning toward Benavidez because the combination of his chin and power might be a little better than Morrell has,” Rafael said.
Morrell, 26, has been a young fighter for just over a year and has never been injured before. It’s hard to say for sure if Benavidez has the better chin or not when Morrell has never been injured. In terms of power, Morrell is the better puncher by far. Rafael is off on this too.
Benavidez is more of a volume puncher who throws a lot of arm slapping shots. All 24 of the Mexican Monster’s knockouts came when he was fighting below his natural weight class at 168, and had a massive size advantage over his opponents.
When he moved up to 175 in his last fight after 11 years as a professional, his power was not the same, and he was never a threat to knock out his opponent Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15 of last year .
“I don’t have any evidence of that because it’s not like Morrell was knocked down or knocked down or seriously hurt. I just have a feeling that in a fight, the guy who’s going to be able to do a little bit better is going to be Benavidez. But we’ll see. That’s so it’s kind of a 50-50 fight,” said Rafael.
