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Trainer Stephen Edwards feels David Morrell does not possess the ring IQ to defeat interim WBC light heavyweight champion David Benavidez in their February 1 fight.
Stephen thinks WBA ‘regular’ 175-pound champion Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) relies too much on his power and explosiveness and doesn’t have a bag of tricks he can rely on if that doesn’t work.
Edwards notes that Morrell struggled in his fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on August 3 in his debut at 175, but was never in danger of losing. In fact, Morrell dominated every round of the fight, but occasionally took big hits from Hot Rod, who can punch.
This guy has better power than Benavidez and Morrell had to be cautious at times. Mainly, he was hitting Hot Rod at will with hard blows and hurt him several times.
Stephen faced ‘El Monstruo Mexicano’ Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) when he defeated his fighter Caleb Plant last year on March 25, 2023, and it didn’t work out well for them. He came out of that fight impressed with Benavidez.
Plant was too weak and small for Benavidez, who looked like a cruiserweight inside the ring in that fight.
Morrell vs. Benavidez will headline February 1st at PBC main video PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. This is the first fight in Benavidez’s 11-year career in which he faces someone in a 50-50 fight who has a chance of beating him.
The closest he came so far to an opponent who had a chance of beating him was in his last fight against Oleksandr Gvozdyk in his debut at 175 on June 15. Benavidez got tired early in that fight and Gvozdyk really hammered him from rounds 7-12.
“This is a fight that David Morrell can win, but I don’t know if he will win,” Stephen Edwards told fight about the fight between David Benavidez and David Morrell on February 1. “He had trouble with ‘Hot Rod,’ but he wasn’t losing.
“There’s a difference when you go back to your corner and you don’t know if you’re on top. I have to see what his adjustments are like when he’s not winning the fight or when the other guy is putting mental pressure on him, which starts to create a little bit of doubt.
“I’m very impressed with David Morrell, but he relies on his forcefulness, his strength and his size. He’s too big to fight at 168. He’s a big guy. I’m very impressed with him, but a lot of the guys he fought were a lot smaller than him, so he doesn’t have to resort to his bag of tricks to rely on other things like his IQ.
Like Benavidez, Morrell was too big for the 168-pound division, but he won’t fight at 175. They both fought smaller fighters at super middleweight. It wasn’t just Morrell who fought a lot of smaller guys. Benavidez was always bigger than his opponents during the 11 years he fought at 168.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t have it, but I haven’t seen it yet,” Edwarda said of Morrell’s in-ring IQ. “I’m going to choose David Benavidez. I think his IQ is highly underestimated. His defense is underrated. People say he’s easy to hit, but when you fight like he fights, you’re going to get hit when you walk up to a guy. Plus, he’s a big guy, but he takes a lot of hits.
“He’s very good at hitting you. You can fight back. He is very aware of his defense. He’s not standing there getting his head smashed everywhere. When you see him being hit, watch him very closely. Even when he gets hit, he has his hands up. So the punches will have to go through his gloves. He is diverting a lot of the power,” Edwards said of Benavidez.
