A slim-looking WBC interim light heavyweight champion, David Benavidez, was showing off his hand speed in a workout in the gym training for his 12-round battle against David Morrell on February 1st on PBC on Prime Video PPV.
In the video clip, Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) threw machine gun rapid-fire combinations and looked scary fast. He used some of that in his debut at 175 against Oleksandr Gvozdyk. However, he got hit hard by the former WBC champion and had to pull back on using that approach in the later rounds.
The good news for Benavidez’s fans is that he appears to have lost the gut that he had a month ago. He took the weight off fast. There’s still a month off before the fight, so Benavidez may get even leaner. In the video clip, Benavidez resembles Morrell, but his combination punching is what sets him apart.
Morrell’s Counterpunching
That style could get Benavidez in trouble with the Cubans. Morrell hits hard, and it could be a mistake for Benavidez to try to stand at close range and throw his combinations.
Fighting like that worked for ‘The Mexican Monster’ when he campaigned at 168 against older fighters like Demetrius Andrade and weaker ones like Caleb Plant. Fighting in a wreckless manner against Morrell or Artur Beterbiev is going to get Benavidez knocked out.
This is the first real fight for Benavidez. He’s padded his record for the last 11 years, fighting smaller guys at 168, and then didn’t look so good when he moved up to 175 on June 15th against former WBC champion Gvozdyk. He’ll look worse against Morrell if he chooses to throw punches in bunches, as he showed in his video clip.
It’s believed that the sole reason Team Benavidez took this fight is that Morrell didn’t look good in his debut at light heavyweight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3rd.
However, Morrell had him hurt several times in the early rounds but failed to put him away because he was looking to knock him out with a single shot rather than throwing combinations. That was an amateur mistake. Against Benavidez, Morrell will be different and will have fixed that problem.
