Commentator Al Bernstein believes David Morrell must be a “perfect counter-puncher” to hurt David Benavidez or mute his offense by connecting with big shots tonight in their headliner at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Bernstein feels that Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) will try and overwhelm WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight champion Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) with volume like he does everyone he faces.
He thinks it might take until the midpoint of the fight for him to start unloading on Morrell as he does in all his bouts. That would require that Morrell be stationary, which he’s unlikely to do. He’s Cuban and uses movement in his fights. He’s young at 27 and not one of the many older fighters Benavidez has built his 29-0 record on.
Counter-Punching Key
“It’s Benavidez, the volume puncher, one of the best combination punchers in all of boxing, against David Morrell, with less experience, and hasn’t faced the same competition that Benavidez has. He’s [Morrell] a very skilled fighter with one-punch knockout power and has shown pretty good boxing skills as well,” said Al Bernstein to Fight Hub TV, talking about tonight’s fight between Benavidez and Morrell.
“That’s possible, but when you’re a volume puncher like Benavidez, unless that person is going to be the perfect counter-puncher when you’re doing all those combinations, it’s not that easy to counter them because you are taking a lot of incoming,” said Al when asked if there’s a possibility of Benavidez being hurt by Morrell when he’s throwing his combinations.
“We’ve not seen Benavidez hurt. He went down once against Ronald Gavril by a jab, but that was more of a flash knockdown. I think Benavidez will try to be a volume-puncher in this fight. It might take a couple of rounds.”
It will be interesting to see if Morrell can hurt Benavidez with one of his big shots in between the combination punching he’ll be doing. That’s how Morrell hurt Kalvin Henderson and Sena Agbeka. They were throwing combinations, and Morrell caught them with a counter shot. He stunned them with a big shot.
Benavidez hasn’t been in with a big puncher who was sitting down on their shots the way Morrell will, and that’s going to make it difficult if he uses the same approach against him. In Benavidez’s last fight against Oleksandr Gvozdyk, he faced a big puncher, but the Ukrainian pushed his punches. It was only in the last two rounds of the contest that Gvozdyk started putting some mustard on his shots, and he hurt a tired Benavidez in the 12th with a body shot.
Plant Comparison
“If you remember Benavidez’s fight against [Caleb] Plant, Plant boxed effectively. In the first half of the fight, Plant wasn’t necessarily winning all those rounds, but he muted part of the Benavidez offense,” said Al.
Usinng Plant as an example to come up with a reason why Morrell can’t hurt Benavidez is a poor one. Plant can’t punch and was dramatically undersized against Benavidez in their fight. Morrell has one-punch power, and he’s as big as Benavidez. He can hurt him.
“Morrell has shown more of boxing skills in recent fights. So, he may choose to be more of a boxer. He may do that. So, Benavidez won’t get that fluid offense going early, but I think we’re going to see it,” said Al.
