Benavidez in trouble against Morrell?

David Benavidez may have made the wrong move by choosing to face the talented WBA ‘ordinary’ light heavyweight champion David Morrell on February 1st.

Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) had dismissed Cuban Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) for the past two years, ignoring his appeals and focusing on taking lighter fights against old relics David Lemieux, Caleb Plant and Demetrius Andrade.

After Morrell Jr.’s last fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3rd, which was not one of his betters, Benavidez and his father/trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr., finally gave up on facing him. Per Salvador Rodriguez on XBenavidez-Morrell will fight at 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 where he fights the winner of Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2 rematch in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and make a gold mine out of the match.

Benavidez must change his style for Morrell

David Benavidez looked far worse in his debut at 175 against former light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk on 15 June. In that fight, where Benavidez won by unanimous decision in 12 rounds, he disappeared after six rounds and took a lot of punishment in the last six rounds, more than in any other fight in his career.

The final punch stat

Benavidez landed 270 of 749 punches for a 36% connection rate. For his part, Gvozdyk landed 223 of 675 for 33%. Gvozdyk landed the much harder punches and was the stronger fighter down the stretch against an exhausted looking Benavidez.

Benavidez made apologies after the fight, blaming his disappointing performance on hand injuries. But 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.

Starting in 2013, he beat ham and eggs for an entire decade without going up 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 had not traveled up with him from the 168-lb division and that his fighting style of throwing machine gun combinations would not work for him at light heavyweight. In fact, if Benavidez doesn’t change that style soon, he’ll be an invalid, headed to Palookaville and wondering what happened to his once-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 him the way he did at 168 or in his fight against Gvozdyk.

Benavidez took a bad beating in the Gvozdyk fight and was badly marked after the fight. He looked like he’d 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 outwork him.

The risk of being knocked out by Morrell is too high and it would 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 striking 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.