Benavidez not impressed with Terence Crawford’s power

Boxingnews24.com

By Mike Smith: WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford knocked out game challenger Jose Benavidez Jr. (27-1, 18 KOs) in the last 20 seconds of round 12 last Saturday night at the Chi Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

The fight was stopped at 2:42 in the 12th round after Benavidez had gotten up from a knockdown. Crawford unloaded with punches until the referee had seen enough and stopped the mismatch. Benavidez looked like he didn’t want to continue after the knockdown, which left the referee in the position where he needed to stop the bout after he started getting hit.

Crawford, 31, was landing shots the entire fight that seemed to have very little effect on the 26-year-old Benavidez. The punches looked like they lacked the power that boxing fans have grown accustomed to seeing from the upper echelon 147 pound fighters like Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter and Manny Pacquiao.

Benavidez revealed after the fight that Crawford’s shot weren’t powerful. Although Benavidez did get knocked down in the 12th round with a hard uppercut from Crawford (34-0, 25 KOs) in the last 20 seconds, he says it was a case of him getting caught with the perfect shot.

Benavidez says he felt fine after he got back to his feet, but the referee Celestino Ruiz stopped the fight anyway. It was a decision Ruiz made based on his gut feeling of where Benavidez was at after getting dropped. To be sure, if Crawford was allowed to tee off on Benavidez at that point, he likely would have landed enough shots to put him down a second time because he was tired and clearly buzzed from the shot.

“I got caught. I thought I was up,” Benavidez said to Fighthype about his fight with Crawford. “I thought I was winning. I didn’t feel any power punches at all. I got caught. What can I say? I’ll be back better and stronger. [I need to] put my hands up. I got careless. I got caught.,”Benavidez said.

There were things that Benavidez should have done differently against Crawford. One of them was to keep his hands up to block Crawford’s incoming. Benavidez spent much of the fight with his hands down by his sides, looking like he didn’t have the energy to hold them up in front of his face. This allowed Crawford to land many more shots than he otherwise would have. The other thing that Benavidez did that was annoying was the posing after he’d get hit. Benavidez would shake his head after Crawford would land a shot, a move that he seemed to think would intimidate him. It didn’t work. Crawford just kept hitting Benavidez over and over in every round. Benavidez should have stopped wasting time with his posing, and instead gone after Crawford to pay him back.

Benavidez said after the fight that he wants a rematch with Crawford. That obviously won’t be happening anytime soon without Benavidez picking up some wins over top contenders in the welterweight division. Top Rank, the promoters for Crawford and Benavidez, love to do rematches between their own fighters, but in this case, it’s not something they’ll likely do in the immediate future. Benavidez needs to get a few solid wins under his belt against talented contenders before Top Rank will consider putting him back in with Crawford. Top Rank is reportedly planning to do a rematch between WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez and Jesse Hart in December. However, in that case, Hart is highly rated at #1 with the World Boxing Organization, and it’s a no-brainer for Top Rank to make the Ramirez-Hart rematch. Benavidez’s case is different. He’s ranked #14 with the WBO at 147, and he’s likely going to get lowered in the top 15. Benavidez will need to put together a lot of good wins for him to get rated high enough for it to be worthwhile for Top Rank to put a rematch together between him and Crawford. If they do the rematch right now, boxing fans will laugh at them and see this as a poor retread fight

Benavidez gave Crawford all he could handle in the first six rounds before his right leg gave out on him. Whether the outcome would have been different if Benavidez’s right leg hadn’t started bothering him is unknown. The 6’2″ Benavidez says he hurt his right hand in the 2nd round. He was still using his right, but it didn’t look like it had the power needed for him to get Crawford’s respect. Benavidez needed to land shots that would make the Nebraska native Crawford cautious and reluctant to unload on him with his best power shots.

”He’s a smart guy. I had to get him off,” Benavidez said about Crawford. ”I was landing a lot of shots. I was catching him on the inside, and I got caught. In the 7th round, my leg gave out. I couldn’t get up much, but I’m not making any excuses on my leg. In thought I gave him a hell of a fight, and I gave him a better fight than any other fighter he’s fought. I didn’t feel his power,”Benavidez said.

Benavidez was definitely the hardest fight that Crawford has had since his 9th round knockout of Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014. One reason for that is the size of Benavidez. At 6’2″, Benavidez gave the 5’8″ Crawford issues. If you look at the majority of the guys that Crawford has fought during his career, he’s generally been the taller guy with the longer reach. Last night against Benavidez, Crawford was the smaller guy fighting in only his second contest at welterweight against a guy that is five years younger than him at 26. Although you can’t say that Crawford is old at 31, it’s still an age where a fighter is beginning to slow down a little. When you take a 31-year-old fighter and put him in against a young 26-year-old, they’re frequently going to have problems with the youthful energy of the younger fighter. I think we saw that last night with Crawford struggling with the youth and size of Benavidez. What’s obvious is Crawford’s punching power doesn’t rate with the top guys in the welterweight division. Benavidez saying that he didn’t feel Crawford’s punching power last night isn’t a case of sour grapes on his part. Benavidez is just pointing out the obvious. The fighter with punching power in the division have the frame for the division, and they’ve been fighting in the weight class from day one in most cases. Spence, Porter and Thurman are natural welterweights. Crawford started his career out at lightweight, and his best weight class is 140. Going to 147, Crawford is going to have problems if he ever faces Errol Spence. Crawford will need to try and outsmart Spence, because he’s not going to be able to stand in front of him and go to war. Crawford couldn’t even to that against Benavidez, who isn’t a big puncher.

With the way that Benavidez is seemingly blaming his loss to Crawford on his leg giving him problems, it sounds like he’s giving excuses instead of giving Bud credit for his victory.

“I was walking into his punches,” Benavidez in continuing to talk about Crawford’s lack of punching power. “I got careless. I got caught right on the button. I got up. I didn’t think I was hurt, but they stopped the fight. I thought I hurt him a couple of times with shots. I hurt him a few times. He didn’t think I was going to be as hard as I was. I was beating him. I was catching him and good body shots. He wasn’t landing. I didn’t feel his power at all in there. I was taking them like nothing, and then I got caught. It’s boxing. If you get caught in the right spot,”Benavidez said.

Crawford didn’t say what his game plan was for the fight, but he might have intentionally let the fight go longer than it should have in order for him to punish Benavidez as much as possible. Assuming that Crawford let the fight go longer on purpose, he took a lot of heavy shots from Benavidez. It looked like Crawford was trying his best, but he couldn’t keep from getting hit by Benavidez. Crawford was trying to make Benavidez with his power shots, but he was getting nailed a lot. This wasn’t a wipe-out like many boxing fans thought it would be. Benavidez gave Crawford more problems than many top fighters that were supposed to be more talented than him.

“I didn’t feel his power, but he has power,” Benavidez said. “He dropped me. It’s his hometown. Even if it had gone to decision, I would have lost. I would have had to drop him. He’s tough, he’s tricky. My leg gave out on me in the 7th round, and I felt like I couldn’t get up anymore. I don’t know if you guys saw me slip. My right leg was giving out on me. On top of that, I messed up my right hand in the 2nd round. I’ll be back. It would have been harder if he beat my a–,” Benavidez said.

Crawford’s showing against Benavidez makes it tough to rate him as a #1 pound-for-pound fighter. What we saw from Crawford against Benavidez was not a #1 pound-for-pound type performance and it wasn’t the showing that you’d see from someone who is supposedly the best fighter in boxing, as Andre ‘SOG’ Ward has already labeled him. That’s wishful thinking on Ward’s part. Crawford clearly isn’t the best fighter in the sport. Guys like Vasyl Lomachenko, Oleksandr Usyk, Dmitry Bivol, Regis Prograis, Oscar Valdez, Mikey Garcia and Miguel Berchelt are all better fighters than Crawford in my opinion. Crawford was a good fighter when he was at 140, but he’s not the same guy at 147. Perhaps Crawford’s success at 140 was because of his size advantage he had over his opponents in that weight class. Now that Crawford is fighting guys that he’s not dwarfing with height, reach and weight, he’s not looking like the sensational fighter he was previously. That tells me that a lot of boxing fans overrated Crawford to begin with. They were naive and didn’t realize that he was arguably a weight bully at 140, and now that he’s fighting guys his own size, he’s not looking as good.

“I gave him a hell of a fight,” Benavidez said. “With 20 seconds left, I got careless. I can’t do that anymore. I’ve got to keep my hands up. A lot of people thought was going to get caught right away. I think I won a lot of fans. I’d love a rematch,” Benavidez said.

One must say that Crawford was exposed last night by Benavidez, who put in a much better effort with only one good leg that Top Rank Jeff Horn did last June. Horn made Crawford look a lot better than he actually is, because he didn’t have the heart, brains or the boxing IQ that we saw from Benavidez. A fighter with talent, power and heart is going to give Crawford severe headaches in his future fights. Guys like Shawn Porter, a healthy Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia and Spence will all have an excellent chance of beating Crawford by knockout. Crawford might be able to beat Danny Garcia, but it would be a hard fight for him due to Danny’s heavy hands, and his powerful left counter shot that he likes to throw. It doesn’t take more than one perfectly landed left hook from Garcia to reduce even the most skilled fighter to rubble. As we saw last night, Crawford has excellent boxing skills and great defensive ability, but he still gets hit. Garcia would be a real risk for Crawford, as would Spence and Thurman. It would be good for Top Rank to slowly acclimate Crawford to the welterweight division by putting him in with bigger punchers in an incremental manner rather than matching him against Spence, Garcia, Porter or Thurman off the back of this performance. Crawford isn’t ready for those types of welterweights, and I’m not sure if he ever will be.