David Benavidez brought in the great Andre Ward to give him technical help ahead of tonight.
Not a bad adviser, Ward, a former pound for pound undefeated world champion.
Speaking to Andre Ward on his podcast while bringing him into his training camp — Ward told Benavidez:
“A lot of times, what you do is you come in, and you can see it. You want to go with both hands. You come in, it’s just that, but you go here. You learn to make quick moves, “bing, bing,” you get into position, bro. You’ve got options now. I go here on you, yeah, go here on you, here on you, here on you, and then I back out with my jab. So, for me, everything was with this. How do you stay on your legs? I know sometimes it’s bad to be too low, but where’s your range? You’ve got to realize, for me, I’ve got shorter arms for my height. I’m like 6’1″, but my arms are short for my height, so I’ve got to find ways to get in close, you know what I’m saying? I bring this in, so it’s here. I bring that in for maximum power but also so I’m in a good range. I can’t be out here because I’ve got shorter arms. I’m here. Somebody like you is going to counter this. Yeah, you can be a really good fighter with both hands. You can be an all-time great if you make this hand great because that’s the hand that’s going to open up these other hands. Because it’s going to make it easier, anything you do that blinds you, you’re blinding yourself here. Bam! I’m off to the side; you’ve got to turn your head. I can get off or I can exit. Just rinse and repeat.”
As you can see, Ward was coaching Benavidez mostly on distance, range, stepping off, closing the distance and being in the right position to get his punches off.
This technical advise will surely come in useful tonight against such a technician of David Morrell.
It will be interesting to see the Benavidez game plan.
