Dan Rafael believes WBC interim super middleweight champion David Benavidez has the upper hand in his fight against ‘regular’ WBA champion David Morrell on February 1.
Journalist Rafael believes Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) has the better chin and punching power of Cuba’s Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) in this bout, which will be shown live on PBC on Prime Video PPV from T- Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The experience factor
“I would lean towards Benavidez. I wouldn’t say because of the pedigree because David Morrell has a deep amateur background from the Cuban system,” said Dan Rafael for Social boxing about the David Benavidez vs. David Morrell fight on February 1st.
“Both are in their prime for their age, although David Morrell has fewer fights because he started late. He left Cuba, and he moved very quickly in the early days of his career. But he shouldn’t have had 1,000 fights because he had all that amateur experience, while Benavidez turned pro at 17. He was more of a work in progress to get him to this point.
“When you look at the records and you see one guy has less than 15 fights and one guy has 30 fights, you think that guy is a lot older and has a lot more experience. That is not the case. They’re both much closer in age and experience, the amateurs that Morrell has kind of make up for that, while Benavidez has more professional experience.”
Morrell has more experience in the sport than Benavidez, who had 148 rounds as a pro during his 12-year career.
Morrell has 54 rounds, but was 130-2 as an amateur in Cuba and has more total rounds against better opponents than Benavidez fought as a professional. Benavidez has fought limited fighters, mostly old guys like Gvozdyk, Demetrius Andrade, 36, David Lemieux and Caleb Plant.
Beard and power
“I’m leaning towards Benavidez because his chin and power combination might be a little better than what Morrell has,” Rafael said.
Morrell, 26, has been a junior fighter for just over a year and has never been injured before. It’s hard to say for sure if Benavidez has a better chin or not when Morrell has never been injured. In terms of power, Morrell is by far the better hitter. Rafael is also not related.
Benavidez is more than a volume hitter who throws a lot of punches. All 24 of The Mexican Monster’s knockouts came when he was fighting under his natural weight of 168, and he had a huge size advantage over his opponents.
When he moved up to 175 in his last fight after 11 years as a pro, his strength wasn’t the same and he never posed a threat to knock out his opponent Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15 of last year.
“I have no evidence of that because it’s not like Morrell was knocked down or knocked out or seriously injured. I just kind of have a feeling that in a firefight, 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 why it’s a 50-50 type of fight,” said Rafael.
