David Benavidez was talking tough during his time at the rostrum of their first press conference, vowing to interrupt the mouth of David Morrell for questioning his courage within the last several years. The 2 fighters met up today to start promoting their February 1st fight on PBC on Prime Video PPV in Las Vegas.
(Credit: Esther Lin and Ryan Hafey/Premier Boxing Champions)
Morrell, 26, has gotten on Benavidez’s nerves by bashing him repeatedly for not stepping as much as fight him. Benavidez felt it was more necessary to fight other guys, like David Lemieux, Ronald Ellis, Demetrius Andrade, and Caleb Plant.
The thought was for Benavidez to remain unbeaten to get the Canelo Alvarez mega-fight. That fight never materialized, so Benavidez is able to take dangerous fights now against Morrell and the winner of the Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2 rematch if he gets that far.
Interestingly, Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) claimed that he couldn’t understand what the Cuban-born Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) was saying when he was speaking Spanish to him. Benavidez speaks Spanish, however the accent is a bit of different than in Cuba, so he couldn’t understand Morrell.
Benavidez will challenge Morrell for his WBA ‘regular’ light heavyweight title in a loaded card on the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The winner might be able to fight for the undisputed 175-lb championship against Artur Beterbiev or whoever holds the 4 belts by the second half of 2025.
“This guy has been disrespecting me. I’m going to interrupt his mouth so he has something to recollect me,” said David Benavidez during today’s kickoff press conference, ripping into David Morrell for criticizing him for the last two to a few years because he refused to fight him until after his recent lackluster performance.
If Benavidez had agreed to fight Morrell years ago, he wouldn’t have been taunted by him. Benavidez felt it was more necessary to fight guys like Lemieux, Plant, and Andrade slightly than Morrell. There needed to have been some fear involved on Benavidez’s part to not comply with fight him until he looked unimpressive in his recent fight against Radivoje Kalajdzic.
Morrell still won that fight by a lopsided 12-round decision on August third, however it wasn’t the style of performance that fans had been accustomed to seeing from him. Morrell had been looking higher than Benavidez until that fight.
“He has been talking about me for about 2-3 years. Disrespecting me, my dad, my brother…so now you desire to take it personally with me. So, I’m personally going to interrupt his mouth so he has something to recollect me by.”
