Wondering at David Benavidez’s talent, weeping for his future
By Bart Barry-
There were two very good title fights in the super middleweight division Saturday, but as the victor of the more widely watched one once got himself origamied by Carl Froch we’re going to treat the victor of the other one instead, and he is 21-year-old David Benavidez. And Benavidez looked sensational rematch-decisioning Ronald Gavril.
Benavidez’s body is syrupy runon oblivious (like this sentence) more than deflated ambitionless immature or unprofessional, like the scolds’ll say of it in their petty and anxious search for surface perfection, the weight of insecurities they project on everything belying the seriousness they tell themselves their scowls purport. His body is shaped to deliver a surprise precision to opponents who doubtlessly peplecture themselves on what deepdigging camp sacrifices they made and he didn’t the better to wilt him with their will the way their seconds and thirds promise them after the middle rounds of fights they know they can’t win unless Benavidez cedes them, and sometimes he almost does too.
Benavidez’s age and facility and shape may as yet prove liabilities – as he’s young enough and easy enough to get bored by the rigors of his craft, and his body says one thing that’s obvious and another that isn’t. What’s obvious is the size and shape to which his body’ll grow unless he brakestomps its homeostatic state hourly; a month of “just eating like everyone else” will weigh him 200 pounds. Easily. What’s less obvious is that, for all the wonders of his punching form, he’ll not have the pop he’d’ve had at 154 had he not once weighed so much more than 154 that 154 is chanceless.
That’s what the inflated middle knuckle of his right hand suspicioned Saturday: There’s no way I should’ve bounced off another man’s face and head so many times with so much force in one evening’s work. The knuckle was right, too; it wasn’t simply the chin of Gavril but the slightly less than atomic pop on the end of Benavidez’s otherwise perfect punches.
What inspires such thoughts are comparisons to a young Thomas Hearns that happened early Saturday, in one writer’s imagination anyway, and the 14 to 21 pounds of inefficiency Benavidez’ll never manage to flense, inefficiency Hearns never had for never having to flense a millimeter. Benavidez is necessarily punching men with more absorbent chins than Hearns did when Hearns became a contender, which means Benavidez’s knuckles’ll have to endure more earlier than Hearns’ did. That may serve to make Benavidez more compelling than he’d’ve otherwise been – for had he stopped Gavril in three rounds there’d’ve been no reason to doubt he could stride through the winner of the World Boxing Super Series and all its participants, and given Benavidez’s body and age such doubtlessness would be no boon.
Then there’s the troubling bit about his overbooked management company and its inability to match its fighters frequently or steer any of them greatness’ way. PBC intended create an alternate boxing ecosystem closed to every unsigned prospect and unbought media, and it worked partially for a couple years when other people’s money was plentiful. Once PBC returned to Showtime, though, head bowed hat-in-gloves, it found a less compliant host, one hardened by PBC’s previous treachery, however often Showtime denies it, and much more likely to do things Showtime’s way, not PBC’s (can you imagine a timebought commentary team listing a Top Rank titlist like Jeff Horn alongside PBC’s welterweights in 2015?), and that means frequent mention of every PBC fighter’s unfortunate inactivity and unfortunater opponent preferences.
Showtime interviewer Jim Gray is now nearer despicable than insufferable but by asking every premier boxing champion whom he wishes to fight next he highlights PBC’s fundamental weakness, in his signature snotty way. Gray was the perfect press vehicle for extracting from Keith Thurman a confession that looked like a boast he’d be fighting exactly no one the next time Thurman appears on Showtime.
What an extraordinary sense of entitlement PBC’s ecosystem has wrought: I’m going to show up at your event and tell you I neither intend to fight anyone you want me to fight nor performed the professional courtesy of curating a one-name-deep list of men I might consider rehabbing my shoulder against on your airwaves.
One hopes Showtime will tell PBC: Here’s the list of opponents we’ll pay Keith Thurman to fight on Showtime, here’s the list of opponents we’ll pay Keith Thurman to fight on our Twitter feed, and everyone else composes the list of opponents you’ll pay us to broadcast Keith Thurman fighting on Snapchat.
PBC may be the perfect management outfit for a Thurman or Deontay Wilder but it’s all wrong for someone with David Benavidez’s youth and ambition and propensity for weightgain. Benavidez needs to be defending his title or unifying other titles at least thrice annually. But now that he’s become a PBC a-side by doublebeating someone from The Money Team he’s about to see his activity and competition cut by a third or more, and if he’s unlucky enough to add another title at 168 he may be suspended from the PBC calendar entirely in 2019.
Just look what the PBC did to Danny Garcia, a once-sympathetic-if-never-beloved man who after upsetting Nate Campbell, Kendall Holt, Erik Morales (twice), Amir Khan, Zab Judah and Lucas Matthysse, in 29 months, needed nearly four years to make another meaningful fight in a weightclass too high, lose, and then celebrate his 11 1/2-month layoff by spearchiseling a retired lightweight to little amazement and a fair dollop of derision.
David Benavidez appears to be a special talent. The PBC has a special talent for mismanaging special talents.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
