Is Morrell’s power enough? Coach questions fighter’s ring IQ for Benavidez Clash

Trainer Stephen Edwards believes David Morrell doesn’t possess the ring IQ to defeat WBC interim light heavyweight champion David Benavidez in their Feb. 1 fight.

Stephen thinks “regular” WBA 175-pound champion Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) is too reliant on his power and explosiveness and doesn’t have a lot of tricks to fall back on if that doesn’t work.

Edwards notes that Morrell had trouble in his fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic on Aug. 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 shots from Hot Rod, who can punch.

This guy has better power than Benavidez and Morrell had to be cautious at times. Mostly, he was nailing Hot Rod at will with strong blows and had hurt him multiple times.

Stephen faced “The Mexican Monster” 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 lightweight in the ring in that fight,

Morrell vs. Benavidez will headline February 1st on PBC on Prime Video PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. This is the first fight in Benavidez’s 11-year career where he faces someone in a 50-50 fight who has a chance of beating him.

The closest he came 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 was really hammered by Gvozdyk from rounds 7-12.

“This is a fight that David Morrell can win, but I don’t know if he’s going to win,” Stephen Edwards told Fighthype about the David Benavidez-David Morrell fight on February 1st. ‘ but he wasn’t losing.

“There’s a difference when you go back to your corner and you don’t know if you’re standing. I need to see what his adjustments are like when he doesn’t win the fight or when the other guy is putting mental pressure on him to the point where it starts to create a little bit of doubt.

“I’m very impressed with David Morrell, but he kind of relies on his strength and 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 so much smaller than him to the point where he didn’t need to fall back on his bag of tricks to rely on other things like his IQ.

Like Benavidez, Morrell was too big for the 168-pound division, but wasn’t fighting at 175. 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 ring IQ. “I will choose David Benavidez. I think his IQ is very underrated. His defense is underrated. People say he’s easy to hit, but when you fight like he fights, you’ll get hit while walking towards a guy. Also, he’s a big guy, but he takes a lot of punches.

“He’s really good at punching you. He can fight back. He is very careful about his defense. He’s not in there letting his head get smashed back all over the place. When you see him hit, look at him very closely. Even when he is hit, his hands are raised. So the punches will have to go through his gloves. He’s diverting a lot of power,” Edwards said of Benavidez.