David Benavidez beat himself before the fight by tipping the scale nearly three pounds overweight Friday in being stripped of his WBC super middleweight title.
But the undefeated star wasn't going to let Alexis Angulo defeat him Saturday night. Benavidez took out all his frustration on Angulo, delivering a relentless boxing clinic before Angulo's corner ended the bout after the 10th round. The TKO victory improves Benavidez to 23-0 with 20 KOs.
The 23-year-old Benavidez was simply on another level and had way too much skills for Angulo to handle at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. There, without a crowd due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Benavidez picked Angulo apart with a relentless pace that spelled unanswered flurries of thudding punches throughout several sequences and surgical precision behind the jab in others.
Overall, he overwhelmed Angulo with ammunition until the Colombian's corner couldn't stomach any more abuse of its fighter and called for the bout to end.
“I rate myself a solid eight,” Benavidez said after the win. “I could have done some stuff better, but overall it was a great performance. I didn’t want to go too fast and leave myself exposed for some big shots. He’s a heavy puncher. But like I said, I like to do the stuff that nobody has ever done. Nobody has ever stopped him and I’m pretty sure nobody is ever going to make him look like that again. I demolished him from round one to round 10.”
If Benavidez could become mentally disciplined, there's foreseeably no reason why he shouldn't be able to make the climb back to becoming a world champ.
“I really have to talk to my promoter to see what’s next," he added. "I’ll fight anybody to get back to the spot I was. You could see by this performance tonight, I could put on a great performance against anybody and people will pay to see that. I’m probably going to go right back into training camp to make sure I don’t miss weight.”
Co-main event: Rolando Romero earns hard-fought unanimous decision over Jackson Marinez to win WBA interim lightweight title
Romero, the Mayweather Promotions fighter, managed to notch a unanimous decision by the scores of 115-113, 116-112 and 118-110 to be crowned WBA interim lightweight champion; however, the popular sentiment was that Marinez did more than enough behind the jab to take the win and interim title.
Otto Wallin defeats Travis Kauffman by fifth-round TKO
The heavyweight got back into the win column after Kauffman suffered a shoulder injury during the fifth round, forcing the referee to step in and end the bout right then and there.