Does Jose Benavidez Jr stand a chance?
Terence “Bud” Crawford (33-0, 24 KOs) is indisputably one of the top two fighters in all of the sport of boxing. The Omaha star first came into our boxing collective consciousness in 2013 on a series of HBO undercards against the likes of Alejandro Sanabria and Andrey Klimov before going on the road the following year to collect his first lightweight title in the UK against Ricky Burns. He did so convincingly too. Despite the title win, it wasn’t really until three months later that Crawford really launched his career though. His initial defense against dynamic Cuban star Yuriorkis Gamboa was his first HBO main event. The two men engaged in an exciting, dynamic world level title fight in which Bud was buzzed once and Gamboa was down three times on route to the first loss of his career.
The Omaha native defended his belt one more time in a wide, easy decision over eventual titleholder Ray Beltran before moving up for a title shot at junior welterweight. After dominating Dierry Jean to pick up a title at 140 lbs and defending it once, Crawford went into the biggest fight of his career against surging fellow junior welterweight titleholder Viktor Postol fresh off his huge stoppage win over Lucas Matthysse. The Ukrainan proved no more of a challenge than anyone else had. Crawford dropped him twice and rolled to a dominant decision. From that point on there was no denying Bud Crawford was a special fighter.
After two more dominant stoppage defenses over John Molina Jr and Felix Diaz, Crawford managed to do the unthinkable. He brought his two belts into the ring against Namibian unified titleholder Julius Indongo’s two belts with complete divisional unification on the line. The fight was a rout. Crawford mercilessly destroyed Indongo in three, leaving him writhing on the canvas while Bud collected the final two belts in the puzzle. In doing so, Crawford joined Bernard Hopkins as the only two men to manage to win the fights and navigate boxing politics well enough to become an undisputed champion in the four belt era.
Terence Crawford is a truly complete fighter. If he had a flaw it was that he didn’t care about winning the first couple rounds. Instead, he used to study his opponent and took a bit to get warmed up. If any of his opponents could have stolen a few late rounds, we could have had an interesting decision or two on our hands given the early rounds the Omaha native gave away in many fights. They were never able to accomplish this, however, and the weakness has largely vanished in recent fights. The three division titleholder is dominant from the opening bell now. Once he gets going, Crawford does what he wants in there. He has great athleticism, reflexes, technique, and really good power too. He can fight off the the back foot, be the aggressor or the counter puncher, working both upstairs and down indiscriminately in either case. He is at absolutely worst one of the top two fighters in the sport. Only Vasyl Lomachenko is potentially better.
Let’s just be honest from the jump. Jose Benavidez Jr (27-0, 18 KOs) probably doesn’t stand much of a chance in this fight. His perceived weakness as an opponent is partly why there is little buzz for a welterweight star fighting this weekend too. It wasn’t supposed to be that way though. There was a time when the older Benavidez brother was set to be a future star in the sport.
Jose signed on to Top Rank at 17 years old, the youngest ever fighter to do so at that time. The Nevada State Athletic Commission granted him an exception to turn professional at that age too because he was so highly regarded. Generally a fighter cannot be licensed before 18, but Benavidez was. His rise was slow and methodical given his age and Top Rank’s traditionally slow progression model of raising fighters, but the sport had its eyes on him. Famed trainer Freddie Roach only added fuel to the fire when he publicly stated that the young Phoenix fighter was the best prospect in his loaded stable when his pro career had only just begun.
Yet, none of this really panned out for Jose Benavidez the way it was supposed to. At least it hasn’t yet. While we should probably keep in mind that he is still only 26 years old, he certainly feels older than that. The relationship with Freddie Roach didn’t work out long term. Rumor is that his father couldn’t give up the control long enough to let the future hall of famer do his work, but I certainly wasn’t there to say for sure. In 2014, Benavidez got a shot at an interim title being held by crafty veteran Mauricio Herrera. It didn’t go well. For most of the fight, Benavidez was bullied by a man thought to be a pretty light puncher. Jose wasn’t absolutely blown out and did show his power at times, but there was little argument to him having won the decision in the end. The judges gave it to him anyway.
After the Herrera fight, Jose defended the fake world title one time against decent Mexican regional level fighter Jorge Paez Jr with a dominant, late stoppage win. He tried to defend it again, but he blew weight by a huge margin and was forced to move up. His development and drive were clearly stagnant to any observer at this point. Worse, it is rumored that he became associated with less than ideal people outside of the sport during this period as well. Jose Benavidez did not have it all together and his career suffered. His body would too.
In 2016 after making his welterweight debut, Jose Benavidez was shot in his hand and leg while out on a walk with his dog. The motive has never been super clear. Was it a robbery gone wrong? Did it have something to do with the types of people he was supposedly associating with? The damage, however, was very clear. It was feared that his career would be over thanks to his compromised leg. Through hard work and determination, traits that haven’t been associated with Jose Benavidez Jr in some time, he did climb his way back to the sport for a comeback in February. Jose has taken two relatively easy tune ups and is now jumping back in the deep end with Terence Crawford waiting to pull him under.
What does Benavidez bring to the table that Terence Crawford hasn’t dismissed easily already? Not a ton, really, but also not absolutely nothing. Benavidez is a better natural athlete than basically any of Crawford’s recent opponents. In truth we probably have to go back to Yuriorkis Gamboa to find a better one. He’s also a good puncher, more so than Jeff Horn, Julius Indongo, or Felix Diaz have been. Those are not small things. The problem, of course, is that between the two of them Bud Crawford is still the better athlete and has much better technical ability. I do think Benavidez stands more of a shot than Jeff Horn did, if that is worth anything. Horn basically had to outsize him. Physically he was a much worse athlete at a much lower boxing skill level. Jose won’t have the same disadvantages to such an extreme level. They’ll still be there though. It’ll take a special shot for him to have won this in the end.
Major Top Rank Olympic prospects Carlos Adames (14-0, 11 KOs) and Shakur Stevenson (8-0, 4 KOs) make up the televised undercard at junior middleweight against Joshua Conley (14-2-1, 9 KOs) and featherweight against Viorel Simion (21-2, 9 KOs). Neither is a particularly compelling matchup, but both are prospects to watch for sure. Conley has been beaten in both step ups while Simion is here on very short notice. He did put in a game performance in a clear loss against Scott Quigg last year, however, so hopefully he tries to do the same here.
The show starts late at 10:30 PM Eastern time on ESPN. The ESPN+ prelims start three hours earlier. They don’t have the usual strong line up of names this time though. A zombie that resembles Mike Alvarado and top female prospect Mikaela Mayer are all the ESPN+ really has ofnote.
