Kings of the Future: David Benavidez
Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images
It's getting a bit late in the day to refer to David Benavidez as a prospect. He is after all 21-0, a six-year pro, and most importantly for this question, he has fought and defended a world title before being sort-of stripped of it after failing a drug test for cocaine (the labyrinthine logic of the alphabet belts means he is now the WBC's champion-in-recess).
He is only 22 though, and that title was both won and defended against Ronald Gavril of Romania, a solid fighter but not one who'd ever been tested at world level himself- the kind of fighter who'd normally be a prospect checker if the original scheduled title fight hadn’t fell apart. Perhaps more to the point, it's quite possible that Benavidez has nowhere near reached his ceiling yet.
So, before he fights Anthony Dirrell for the sole right to that WBC title on Saturday, let's stretch a concept and take a look at what Benavidez has got, and what more he might need as he climbs onto the highest rungs of his division.
SPEED, AND ITS VARIATIONS
This'll one of the first things you're going to notice about Benavidez: he's fast. His showpiece is the rapid-fire flurry that ended the fights against J'Leon Love and Rogelio Medina, but ultimately—and what sets him apart from many other fast young fighters—he isn't that fast all the time. It's a fairly basic boxing fundamental that variation is key, but a lot of fighters who can flurry like that can't resist at doing it full pace every time (raise your hand, Gary Russell Jr). Benavidez, though, understands this, and will use varied speeds, hesitations, and half-thrown shots to confuse his opponents’ reactions and make it difficult to get a rhythm.
Here, Benavidez hits Love with an uppercut and a tentative follow up. Love takes the sting off the first one and the second one is lazy, so he sees an opening to drive in and try to shove Benavidez back from a low stance. After a brief sequence of exchanges, the second double uppercut is sharper, faster, and all round a much less pleasant experience for Love, who decides that actually maybe he wants to move away after all.
That's not the only thing Benavidez can switch up though, as we'll see next:
WHAT IS HIS FAVORITE STYLE?
With most fighters, you can generally tell when push comes to shove what they're most comfortable with doing in the ring. Even the really well-rounded ones, there'll usually be a particular style that visibly takes less adjustment time, less hesitation, to jump into doing.
We may well come to find that out about Benavidez in fights to come, but for now, it is difficult to tell. He seems as comfortable moving backwards as forwards, and quite as happy to counter as lead. He's also able and willing to switch between those modes at any time, which makes him a difficult man for opponents to discomfort at all.
J'leon Love tried to start off intimidating Benavidez with pressure, but sharp volume counters soon made that idea too uncomfortable, leaving Love awkwardly aborting attacks shortly after.
In the second round Love decided boxing on the back foot was a better approach, but soon found himself corralled into the corners and given no opportunity to get punches off as Benavidez took the lead and beat him to the punch repeatedly before overwhelming him with combinations, a situation which ultimately led to a swift stoppage.
A HANDY DEFENSE
In the current era of boxing, for most fighters, defense tends to fall into three categories: a high guard, head movement, or simply just keep away. Benavidez isn't the only fighter who knows the value of using his arms and gloves beyond just turtling up behind a high guard, but he's rapidly become someone who does it well in multiple ways, and as such is worth studying on the matter. Let’s have a quick look at some of the things he does, and see if we can find a handy example of him doing them.
Active guard: this first thing is something very simple that far too many fighters forget- even when your gloves are up to protect your head you are allowed to move your arms. Benavidez is a big long fellow, which tends to make people wonder about vulnerability to the body, but his elbows are a force even in a sport where you're not allowed to hit people with them, and working the body to open the head isn't particularly successful against him either.
I'm long, and that means there's a lot of me to blind you with: once you've mastered that, you can move on to the next step- even if you're not in guard, sticking a hard, non-scoring bit of you between their fists and what they're aiming at is great way to stop them hitting you. Thanks to Floyd, everyone these days loves a shoulder roll, but that really isn't the only thing, and Benavidez is starting to enjoy simply sticking forearms, elbows, the side of his glove, anything he can find really, into the most likely channels for his opponents to be aiming at.
He's also begun (Love got this more than Gavril in either fight) to use this to disguise attacks- both opponents got hit repeatedly by shots they didn't see because the other hand was tickling their nose, and Love in particular frequently found his guard and his head dragged around and manipulated.
You can see some of all of the above in this sequence, where Benavidez blocks and parries shots upstairs and down, leaves his glove hanging to obscure Love’s vision, then starts manipulating his head (a little too much for the ref’s liking in this instance).
AN UNSTABLE BASE
All the above, though, does come with a caveat. Benavidez' defence with his hands and arms needs to be top quality, because he has gaps elsewhere. Probably the most immediately visible problem is that he is prone to getting stiff and upright and his head movement sometimes disappears (an issue he's improved a lot in recent fights but still exists), but all this is a manifestation of a basic problem right at the bottom.
We talked above about how comfortable Benavidez is moving in any direction, but 'comfortable' doesn't always mean 'correct'. Benavidez often boxes as if he doesn't believe in the 'step-and-slide' principle at all.
As seen here, when chasing an opponent he pretty much just walks around in the shortest possible route to where he's going, often getting his feet crossed and not uncommonly chasing them with his hands while leaving his feet a step behind and then needing to trip forward to catch his balance. This is a tiny flaw when facing someone in full retreat mode as Love is here, but it’ll seem a whole lot more huge if he’s still doing it when he faces a counterpuncher trying to draw it out of him.
When moving back, on the other hand, he's prone to ending up with his feet square and his weight over his heels, a position which doesn’t aid his head movement at all and which sometimes sees him fall back into any old stance before he can reset, as above. This only ever lasts a second before he slides out into a more proper stance from which he can work, but it's a vulnerable second.
This isn't an irredeemable flaw- he's already improved on it a lot since the first fight with Gavril, where these habits saw him have more trouble than had been expected and led to a late knockdown on the way to the win. He is now far more careful about where his feet are while he's actually set and throwing, which also allows his reactive head movement to be better, and he corrects mistakes faster. But it's a vulnerability that, at world level, is going to be seen, particularly by dedicated counterpunchers. It's not going to see him outboxed, necessarily, but it leaves him open to flash knockdowns, or being caught leaning into something that'd never normally hurt him. So, in summary, he cannot sit still on this, and needs to follow up on the improvements already made.
THE FUTURE
On Saturday, Benavidez finally, after multiple attempts to make the fight, steps in to fight Anthony Dirrell, who holds that WBC belt. It's a definite step up for him- Dirrell is an experienced, well-rounded boxer with a bit of dog in him, and he's fought and won at world level, so Benavidez can't sleep on this. Dirrell has a major stylistic issue here though – he likes a counter, but he usually saves them for after his opponent's done what they're going to do to try to catch them sloppy. It's not out of the question that he'll catch Benavidez with something there, but if he can't disrupt him while throwing he's likely to get overwhelmed by volume.
That, combined with physical disadvantages at every level and defense heavily reliant on reflex against a man much faster and bigger than he is, means Benavidez should be heavily favoured to reclaim the title. It'll be particularly interesting to see, given his visible improvements in each of his last two fights, what else he has added to the toolbox, too.
Should he get that win, he faces a decision – he's a very big SMW, and at some stage he's going to have to move up. Both divisions feature some compelling matchups, though should he move up, he'll probably shortly be joined by the majority of the SMW champions in any case.
Whatever he chooses, the stage is set for Benavidez to attempt something special- it's not always been easy for great fighters of this generation to find multiple top opponents, but there are so many options here that even if promotional issues put paid to some of them, Benavidez has a chance to make a genuine tilt to hit pound-for-pound lists if he's as good as it seems he might be.
Here's hoping.