Good night, sweet Jose.
Jose Benavidez Jr (27-1, 18 KOs) had a nice opening round thanks to his size and jab against heavily favored pound for pound elite Terence “Bud” Crawford (34-0, 25 KOs). The challenger didn’t do anything big beyond mean mugging, but he won it and few take rounds against the welterweight star. The second round was still slow. It picked up with a flurry at the end in which both men got glancing work in, but for me it was Bud Crawford’s bit of body work in the middle of the round that carried it. His brilliant boxing mind noted what worked in the second and he amplified the body work to take the third big too.
The title challenger would not go away quietly. He had a very nice fourth round, at one point landing two hard shots upstairs and then working the body well late on counter rights. I hadn’t see Crawford get hit clean like he did a few times in the fourth in years. The success for the Phoenix native carried into the fifth too. He was countering consistently while Crawford was having some difficulty getting inside. The size distance was stark and important. Jose looked like a middleweight in there. Bud did find his distance better in the sixth round though, especially in the last minute. It was one of the few times in the first half of the fight that he looked comfortably in control like normal. I had the fight even after six.
Maybe tired, maybe frozen by the offense of one of the sport’s current greats, Jose Benavidez slowed down in a big way in the seventh. It was the first easy round for either man in the fight. Crawford did what he wanted. The local star did the same in the eighth. Benavidez was a little more active, but he was starting to get out classed in there. Round nine was similar.
The tenth opened like the previous few rounds, but later in the frame Jose Benavidez finally succeeded in pulling Crawford into the brawl along the ropes that he was looking for. Terence still got the better of it, but in the fierce exchanges Jose looked alive for the first time since the midpoint of the fight. He cruised in the eleventh though, declining Jose’s offers to brawl at several points. Terence Crawford is just too smart to get pulled into that.
The fight came to a dramatic conclusion in the final minute of the final round. As Jose Benavidez shook his head for the hundredth time to claim he wasn’t hurt from clean Crawford shots, doing the stupid thing of announcing to the judges that clean punches did land, Crawford crumbled him to the canvas with a ferocious right uppercut. He rose in serious trouble and was finished with eighteen seconds on the fight. A big hook was the last shot that landed as the felled challenger was on the verge of going down again. That must have been a satisfying finish for the local star.
Post-fight Bud Crawford spoke on not letting his opponents getting in his head and gave Benavidez credit for making him struggle with his distance early. He also refused to call anyone out in the division.
Shakur Stevenson (9-0, 5 KOs) also picked up an impressive win in the co-main event. He absolutely blew out Viorel Simion (21-3, 9 KOs), dropping him three times in the first round on the way to the stoppage. Simion isn’t a world level contender and did come in on late notice, but he’s a man who had gone the distance with both former titleholders Scott Quigg and Lee Selby. To get him out so quickly is a positive notch on Stevenson’s belt for sure.
