WBC interim 175-lb belt-holder David Benavidez took a lot of punishment but was victorious, besting WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight champion David Morrell with a 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The win for Benavidez (30-0, 24 KOs) makes him the WBC mandatory to champion Artur Beterbiev’s belt.
The scores
115-111
115-111
118-108- No words
I had it scored 8-4 for Morrell. He won eight rounds and dropped Benavidez. It’s not a shock that Benavidez was given a win. He’s very popular in Las Vegas, but he didn’t do enough to win in the real sense, if we’re being fair.
Knockdown and Penalty
Benavidez was knocked down in the 11th round by a blistering right hook from Morrell. However, at the end of the round, the referee penalized Morrell for hitting after the bell. It was a strange-looking move by the ref that raised some eyebrows of fans.
As most boxing fans would expect, Morrell landed the harder, cleaner shots all night, snapping Benavidez’s head back again and again in each round. Like in his debut at 175 last June, Benavidez showed zero power, and had to focus on volume punching to make up for it. Still, Morrell’s power shots were more than enough for him to win rounds.
Trunks and Refereeing
What was hilarious was how Benavidez had is trunks pulled up practically to his nipples, and the referee didn’t order him to pull them down to his waist level where they should have been. I could not believe it. It’s like how Tyson Fury wears his trunks and gets away with it.
Stuff like that should have been addressed during the fight rather than Benavidez having that advantage. We’d seen that he’d been hurt to the breadbasket in his previous fight against Oleksandr Gvozdyk.
So, naturally, that would be the area where Miorrell would have targeted. But how could he throw to Benvidez’s body without hitting him low? If Benavidez fights Artur Beterbiev next, the four-belt champion needs to alert the referee to do his job.
