David Benavidez believes former WBC featherlight heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk has a delicate chin ahead of his June 15 fight.
Benavidez (28-0, 24 KO) says that in his career he saw Gwozdyk (20-1, 16 KO) fall twice and then learned the same thing while sparring with him.
That gives Benavidez the confidence to knock out the 37-year-old in his fight for the WBC interim 175-pound title on PBC on Prime Video PPV at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Of course, Benavidez was dropped by no-hitter Ronald Gavril in 2018, so his chin isn’t the biggest either.
Additionally, Benavidez didn’t fight an opponent like Gvozdyk because his managers selected him carefully and pitted him against the likes of David Lemieux, Demetrius Andrade and Ronald Ellis instead of an elite-level opponent.
The size factor
Benavidez’s fans feel that he has hounded the scales for most of his career, focusing on fighting at 168 pounds rather than fighting fighters of the same size at cruiserweights and featherlight heavyweights.
At least in this fight with Gwozdyk, Benavidez will face an opponent similar in height to him, maybe a little smaller.
The thing is, Gvozdyk was retired for four years, from 2019 to 2023, and since retiring, he has only had two fights. The 37-year-old Gvozdyk is not adolescent, but we will see what he has left in the fight against a fighter who managed to cope by being bigger than his opponents.
“It’s me or him in the ring and I can’t let him get to me. I come here to do my job and my job is to beat Oleksandr Gvozdyk,” said David Benavidez PPV_Com about his fight for the interim WBC featherlight heavyweight title against Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Benavidez will take a lot more punches in this fight than he has taken earlier in his career, and it will be captivating to see if he can handle being hit by someone with power who won’t give him 15 to 20 pounds on fight night.
“It didn’t concern me at all. There are certain things and maneuvers you can do to get around the jab. You definitely have to practice it throughout training camp,” Benavidez said when asked if Gvozdyk’s jab caused him problems during sparring five years ago, when he was 22.
Gvozdyk’s power: a legitimate threat
It’s not Gwozdyk’s jab that Benavidez will have to worry about on June 15. These are his power shots and it won’t be tough for him to hit him if he stands directly in front of him and tries to throw punch combos like he has done in his last few fights. Benavidez can’t fight Gvozdyk without getting torpedoed.
“He’s a rapid fighter; he has a quick right hand. I would say his right hand is better than his jab,” Benavidez said. “So he has a really skillful right hand. What I noticed as he was coming was that he was in a lot of pain.
“He got close to Top Rank in a few fights and my brother was on the same card and got dropped a few times [by Tommy Karpency and Artur Beterbiev]” – Benavidez said about Gwozdyk. “So his chin isn’t everything. I feel he has a delicate chin, I tested it in sparring and realized this fact again.
Gvozdyk was knocked down by Tommy Karpency in the first round of their 2016 fight with a shot he didn’t expect, but quickly recovered and knocked him out in the sixth round. In the match against Artur Beterbiev, Gvozdyk fought the greatest boxer in the division.
Just because he dropped Beterbiev doesn’t mean Gvozdyk is gaunt. Worse still, Benavidez was knocked down by Ronald Gavril and won a controversial 12-round split decision in his first fight in 2017.
“So now we’re going to go in there and do as much damage as possible. I saw that fight and it was a great performance from him,” Benavidez said when told Gvozdyk faced ponderous shots from Adonis Stevenson in 2019.
“I feel like I’m a different type of fighter. I have a lot of speed, a lot of combinations and a lot of power. I also have a great jab myself and more. I have the will and determination to show everyone that I am the best in the world.
Benavidez’s heavyweight ambitions
“It’s still my dream, but with these dreams, we don’t want to rush to that point. We kind of want to take it one step at a time,” Benavidez said when asked about his interest in moving up to heavyweight and following in the footsteps of Andy Ruiz Jr. to try to become a world champion in that weight class.
That’s a bridge too far for Benavidez to be thinking about winning the world heavyweight title. He’s going to have a tough time winning a world title at 175 pounds, let alone a heavyweight title. Listening to Benavidez, you could tell that the 168 victory went to his head and made him feel invincible.
This is always the case with players matched to players of a certain level. When they finally rise to the challenge and are defeated, their tone changes, but until that happens, they look unbeatable.
“It has to be because all these fighters in all these weight classes are really good. So we do it step by step. “We will make it to 175 pounds and then we will conquer the cruiserweight division and then we will move on to the heavyweight division,” Benavidez said.
Beterbiev: Benavidez’s potential nightmare
If IBF, WBC and WBO featherlight heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev is able to return from his knee injury, he will be a nightmare for Benavidez as he is a tough puncher and good at punching combinations with destitute defensive skills.
Benavidez has dominated throughout his career thanks to his massive numerical advantage over the smaller, weaker opponents he faced.
When the guys you fought are former 154-pound champion Demetrius Andrade and David Lemieux, it doesn’t say much about Benavidez. His resume is terrible and he is a classic example of a player whose reputation was built on the back of a lower-level opponent.
“It’s definitely my dream to be a four-division champion and a heavyweight champion. So we will continue to work tough and see where our career takes us,” Benavidez said.
If Benavidez manages to win the 175-pound world title, he will have a good chance of winning the cruiserweight belt because the number of fighters with belts in this division is restricted. Benavidez could easily win the cruiserweight world title now, but then so could many of the top featherlight heavyweights. It’s a delicate division right now.
Benavidez will have problems in the heavyweight division. He won’t be able to stand up to heavyweights and try to beat them with volume. They’ll have his head cut off against a guy like Anthony Joshua if he’s still around before he moves up to heavyweight.
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