David Benavidez did it, but it was not nearly as easy as it was supposed to be. He is now the youngest titleholder in super middleweight history, but only by the narrowest of margins. J’Leon Love also escaped without a loss with some controversy while Caleb Plant gave the only predictable outcome by winning a shut out decision on the undercard.
Well, that wasn’t how that was supposed to go. David Benavidez (19-0, 17 KOs) picked up his first world title in record time for the super middleweight division, but he did not roll over Ronald Gavril like most people, myself included, expected. The fight started well for Benavidez and I gave him the first four rounds, but the third was close and Gavril was ripping him to the body the whole time. The 20 year old was just outlanding him narrowly but consistently.
The tenor of the fight started shifting in the fifth round. There Benavidez began to slow a little while Gavril begin to turn up the heat just enough to flip the script in the fifth and sixth rounds. Now instead of Benavidez narrowly winning competitive rounds, Gavril took on that role. After a brief rally from “La Bandera Roja” in the seventh, the Romanian supposed b-side re-upped the ante in his blue collar style in response for rounds eight and nine while his young opponent seemed to tire a bit.
The tenth started like a previous two rounds, but Benavidez began a rally in the last minute. While it may have been too late to win the round, the surge carried into the final two rounds. Impressively, the young fighter whose stamina was beginning to be questioned was able to rally for his best round in the fight in the eleventh. For a minute it looked like he might rally be hurting Gavril, but he easily survived to the bell despite losing an important round.
The same momentum was carried into the twelfth and final round, but all things come to an end. While the 20 year old won the majority of the time in the round by digging deep into his gas tank, he walked into a left hook after dominating the first two and a half minutes and went down. This could have been a disaster in terms of scoring and is an interesting case study into how to score a rare type of round. In my view, David Benavidez clearly won the round. One punch aside, he dominated it in fact. He also wasn’t really hurt, just technically a mess when he was dropped.
This is how I see it. Benavidez won the round 10-9, but he loses a point for getting dropped and it becomes 9-9. If you interpret the 10 point must system literally like I do, then you can round that up to 10-10 if you want like I did. It doesn’t matter though. That means I scored the fight six rounds to five with one even for David Benavidez, 114-113. The scores came back sort of wide, but in two different directions with two for David Benavidez and one for Ronald Gavril. It wasn’t easy, but La Bandera Roja won his belt.
Despite the narrow loss, Ronald Gavril’s stock shot through the roof in this fight. He went from an unknown afterthought to a contender in the division. Well done to the Romanian. As for David Benavidez, maybe his stock as a destroyer takes a small hit, but it felt like more a really good performance from Gavil than any big flaws being exposed on his part. All around it was just a good fight.
J’Leon Love (23-1-1, 13 KOs) was very fortunate not to leave with a loss last night in his hometown of Las Vegas at the hands of Abraham “Abie” Han (26-3-1, 16 KOs). In the eighth round the two fighters suffered one of the worst clashes of heads you will ever see. Not only did both fighters suffer serious cuts from the impact, but Abie Han was near knocked out by it. He completely lost his legs as blood absolutely gushed from his head.
By the rules of the sport, the fight went to the scorecards and came back a majority draw. The problem here is that by both my estimation and the opinions of the Showtime team, Abie Han was winning this fight. He was just more active and landing more. I had him winning 4-3-1 in terms of rounds, with the drawn round being the eighth in which little happened before the accidental foul. That is 77-76. Quite frankly I was about as generous as I think I could have been to Love as well. Yet, a draw is what we got in the end. Let us just do our best to ignore the card that came back 79-73 for J’Leon Love.
In the opener, Caleb “Sweet Hands” Plant (16-0, 10 KOs) did his thing in casually beating up Andrew Hernandez (19-7-1, 9 KOs) en route to a shut out ten round decision win. Every Caleb Plant fight has basically been this same and this was no exception. The talent gap here is large as Plant is a very coordinated prospect while Hernandez is a journeyman, but yet Plant still can’t find the final gear to really push for a finish. A win is a win, however, and that is what Caleb picked up here.
