The David Morrell vs. David Benavidez clash on February 1st will be a WBC light heavyweight final eliminator. The winner of their fight will face the victor of the rematch between undisputed 175-lb champion Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol of their clash on February 22nd.
Morrell’s Upset Bid
If the Cuban Morrell upsets Benavidez, it’s going to be a lot of angry fans who bought into ‘The Mexican Monster’ as being a great fighter. He’s been bragging about himself for years, pushing like mad for a fight against Canelo Alvarez, but never proving himself against high-level fighters until now.
It took Benavidez 11 years to finally face a threat, and it will be interesting to see how he performs. A loss by Benavidez against Morrell will show that fans got suckered into thinking he was great without looking closely at the type of opposition he’d been facing.
Moreover, Benavidez has been fighting out of his natural weight class for years, as he should have been at 175 from the start of his career due to his massive size. He was bigger than his last opponent, former WBC light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk, in their fight on June 15th, and looked horrible in that fight.
It was already understood that the Benavidez-Morrell winner would fight the winner of the Beterbiev-Bivol 2 rematch, but the World Boxing Council just confirmed that.
Rematch And Trilogy?
If Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) loses the rematch to Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs) on February 22nd, there’s a strong possibility of an immediate trilogy. They would then be 1-1, and fans would demand a third match.
Former WBA 175-lb champion Bivol is going to use his hit, run & hold style to try to win a decision against the knockout artist Beterbiev. That’s the approach Bivol utilized in their previous fight on October 12th, which almost worked for him. It was ugly to watch, but the judges scored it closely, giving Beterbiev a 12-round majority decision by the scores 115-113, 116-112, and 114-114.
It would have been more interesting if His Excellency Turki Alalshikh had set up a fight between undisputed light heavyweight champion Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) and Benavidez for February 22. Bivol could have fought Morrell, and the winners of those two fights could have met for the undisputed.
WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight champion Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) and WBC interim champ Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) will have their belts on the line when they meet in two months at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Vegas. The two are headlining on PBC on Prime Video PPV.
