Benavidez: "I scared Morrell!"

David Benavidez is still convinced he has David Morrell “afraid” by him because of the hard shove he gave him during their face-off at the December 17 media training session to promote their February 1 match.

‘The Mexican Monster’ uses fear to promote the fight and he often talks about it in his interviews and says he sees it in Morrell.

This focus on fear is pointless because it won’t stop Morrell from throwing punches on February 1st. You can tell from Benavidez that he is worried about this fight. There are millions at stake for him.

Benavidez’s fear projection

Morrell fought two-time Cuban gold medalist Julio Cesar La Cruzand he didn’t look scared. That guy is a better fighter than Benavidez by a mile.

It seems important to him to have Morrell scared. If Benavidez believed in himself, he wouldn’t focus so much on seeing fear in the Cuban. The fact that he didn’t want to fight Morrell for two solid years is a sign that he was the one living in fear.

“I scared him. I definitely know he’s 100% scared of me. I’m going to beat him on February 1st,” David Benavidez told the Bet On Yourself YouTube channel, talking about David Morrell.

“If I was able to sit down on my punches, I would have gotten that guy out of there,” Benavidez said of his last opponent, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, whom he beat last year on June 15. “That’s a big part of why I made this fight happen [winning the WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight title from Morrell].

“Also, another part is I have to go in there and shut this guy up. I’m going to show the world what I’m about and I’m going to beat David Morrell in front of everybody. If you beat the best of the best, come the money. What matters to me is the respect you get from the people and the money is going to come, it’s on,” Benavidez said.

The bit about Benavidez not being able to sit down on his punches seems to some as if he is making excuses to try to explain away his poor performance against Gvozdyk. I would have been better off if Benavidez had kept quiet and admitted he was fighting in his first fight at 175. Bringing up injuries sounds weak.

It didn’t appear that Benavidez was injured, but one can understand why he would mention his ailments. He was terrible in that fight, which should have been scored as a 12 round draw.

The judges gave Benavidez the decision, but he looked 100% like he didn’t do enough to win. So his mention of injuries is now permanently understandable. It’s called ‘damage control’.

Fake bravado

“David Morrell is a good fighter. The Cuban boxing school, they are technical fighters. The thing about me is that I have a lot of experience. I have been in the ring with many great champions, not only in fights but in sparring. I have the dog in me. I just have to go in there and activate it,” Benvidez said.

From the way the ‘Mexican Monster’ is talking, he will try to outwork Morrell in hopes that he can go through his shots to knock him out or win a grueling decision. Benavidez is tailor-made for Morrell with his emphasis on combination punches, which will leave him open to the Cuban’s counter punches.

It’s a risky way to fight Morrell because he’s not an old, undersized fighter like many of the guys Benavidez beat when he was campaigning at 168 against smaller guys.