David Benavidez Stops Roamer Alexis Angulo in Dominant Performance
There wasn’t any way for David Benavidez to hide it. His anguish came through the computer screen on the video conference. The 23-year-old chalked it up to a mirror moment, a lesson he won’t soon forget.
Though as Benavidez spoke immediately after losing his WBC world super middleweight title on the scales on Friday, there was an underlying sense that he was not about to relinquish his second-most valuable boxing trinket: The bedazzling ‘0’ on his record.
Benavidez was clearly upset after he came in at 170.8 pounds, close to three pounds over the 168-pound limit for Saturday night’s title defense against Roamer Alexis Angulo on the PBC on SHOWTIME Championship Boxing telecast from the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Benavidez could have been rattled by being overweight for the first time in his career. He wasn’t. His focus could have wandered. It didn’t. Losing the ‘0’ on his record could have been the stunning exclamation point of a bad weekend.
It wasn’t.
Benavidez erased Friday from his head, then went about his business by stopping Angulo for the first time in his career, ending it in 10 rounds.
Entering the fight, Benavidez (23-0, 20 KOs) took his share of criticism, with many wondering if he had the proper dedication to boxing as someone of his stature should.
“It was a mistake on my part,” Benavidez said of missing weight. “A lot of people can say what they want. I’m in the gym every day. Just because this was my first time missing weight in eight years as a professional, it’s not like I missed weight hundreds of times.
“I’m extremely dedicated. I work as hard as anybody else. It’s the first time I missed weight. I got fined a lot of money. I lost the title. My job was to still win the fight. I still had a good fighter in front of me. I’ll have another opportunity at a belt sometime in the future.
“My main objective was to win the fight.”
In the second round, Benavidez built a template of how the fight would go. He chopped at Angulo’s body with both hands and came back upstairs with right uppercuts and combinations that had Angulo (26-2, 22 KOs) covering up. He mixed the right to the body and the head. He used the jab to set up power punches from different angles.
Each round was a repeat of the previous round. Benavidez turned on a strong barrage in the final seconds of the seventh. By then, the former two-time titlist was well in command. In the last minute of the 10th, Benavidez punished Angulo against the ropes. It forced referee John Callas to lean in and take a close look.
Angulo’s corner wound up doing their fighter a favor by stopping it between the 10th and 11th.
ShoStats revealed Benavidez landed 219/391 power shots, for an amazing 56%. Angulo managed to connect on 51/400 (13%) total punches.
“I felt good,” Benavidez said. “I’m so disappointed and embarrassed at myself. Everything everybody said about me is true. I should be a professional and come in at weight. I have to go back to the drawing board.
“The diet has to be way stricter than it already is. Hopefully, I’ll get another chance fighting for the WBC title again. I want to get all of these fights before I go up (in weight). I have to be more dedicated than I was. If I have a discipline problem, it would have showed in the ring.”
It didn’t.
