David Benavidez's light heavyweight debut was a success against Oleksandr Gvozdyk on Saturday night, but more questions arose about his performance, especially late in the fight when he appeared to tire.
During the Probox TV post-fight show, both Paulie Malignaggi and Teddy Atlas gave their opinions on the bout, offering differing perspectives.
Atlas, who previously coached Gvozdyk (20-2, 16 KOs), predicted the latter would win. He pointed to the power and youth of Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) as reasons for the win, but was not impressed with his attitude in the second half of the bout.
“The reason I picked him was because he was fresh,” Atlas said. “The difference in the fight is one guy is playing with paintballs, and you shoot paintballs at him and they splash on your shirt, and the other guy is using real ammo. Benavidez was throwing punches. Benavidez was in good form for the first seven or eight rounds, whatever.”
Atlas added: “Benavidez has never fought anyone bigger. He's such a gentleman. He touched gloves and was like, 'OK, let's finish it. I'm in control of the fight, I'm just going to finish it.' That shows he's taken his foot off the gas.”
Malignaggi had high praise for Gvozdyk and noted that the win should rank as a major accomplishment with Benavidez announcing after the bout that he would be moving back to super middleweight, which is significant considering Benavidez's previous two bouts were against Gvozdyk and Demetrius Andrade, both of whom were seen as fighters to be avoided.
“I'll add that Gvozdyk was a winner against Beterbiev before he lost,” Malignaggi said. “Yes, he's a little older, but he's a very tough opponent to beat round by round. Benavidez dominated the early rounds.”
In the second half of the match, Malignaggi noticed a change compared to what he had seen so often in the past.
“It ended up being more like sparring,” Malignaggi said. “He took a big lead and then he stepped back and let him attack. Well, I wouldn't say he let him attack, but he was tired and he was able to attack.”
Despite the criticism, Malignaggi stressed that Benavidez's performance should not be underestimated.
“Benavidez is going to get criticized because he doesn't look like Superman every fight,” Malignaggi said, “He looked pretty good. If you take away the expectation that he's going to overpower you every fight, this is still a solid win against a good fighter.”
