David Benavidez was talking tough during his time at the podium in his first press conference, vowing to tear David Morell’s courage to question his courage over the years. The two fighters met today in Las Vegas to promote their February 1st fight on PBC on Prime Video PPV.
Morel, 26, has gotten on Benavidez’s nerves by repeatedly hitting him for not stepping up to fight him. Benavidez felt it was more important to fight other guys, such as David Lemieux, Ronald Ellis, Demetrius Andrade, and Caleb Plant.
Benavidez’s idea was for Canelo Alvarez to go undefeated to get the megafight. The fight never materialized, so Benavidez is now set to take on a dangerous fight against Morel and the winner of the Artur Beterbeev vs. Dmitri Byol 2 rematch if it gets to that point.
Interestingly, Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) claimed he couldn’t understand what the Cuban-born Morel (11-0, 9 KOs) was saying when he spoke Spanish to him. . Benavidez speaks Spanish, but the accent is a little different than in Cuba, so he couldn’t understand Morel.
Benavidez will challenge Morel for his WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight title on a packed card at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The winner will be in position to fight for the undisputed 175-lb championship against Artur Beterbeef or the four-belt holder until the second half of 2025.
“This guy is disrespecting me. I’m going to break his mouth so he has something to remember me by,” David Benavidez said during today’s kickoff press conference, after David Morell Criticized for two or three years, saying that he had refused to fight this weak performance.
If Benavidez had agreed to fight Morel years ago, he wouldn’t have been taunted by him. Benavidez felt it was more important to fight guys like Lemieux, Plant and Andrade than Muriel. There should have been some trepidation on Benavidez’s part not agreeing to fight him until he looked unimpressive in his recent fight against Raduje Kalajdzic.
Morel still won that fight by a 12-round decision on August 3, but it wasn’t the type of performance fans were used to seeing from him. Morel had looked better than Benavidez leading up to this fight.
“He has been talking about me for almost 2-3 years now. Disrespecting me, my father, my brother… so now you want to take it personally with me. So, I personally apologize to him. Going to break the mouth so he has something to remember me by.
