David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

By Boxing News - 02/18/2018 - Comments

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

By Jim Dower: WBC super middleweight champion David Benavidez (20-0, 17 KOs) retained his WBC title with an impressive master class 12 round unanimous decision over the always tough Ronald Gavril (18-3, 14 KOs) on Saturday night in a fight televised on Showtime Boxing in front of a large pro-Benavidez crowd at the at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

(Photo credit: Stephanie Trapp/SHOWTIME)

Gavril’s nose was badly swollen and bleeding from the huge shots that Benavidez was hitting him with all night long.

Benavidez, 21, looked like he could have knocked out the 31-year-old Gavril in the later rounds, but he appeared to have mercy on him. Benavidez took his foot off the throttle in rounds 10, 11 and 12 and used jab to win the championship rounds. It was revealed afterwards by Showtime’s Jim Gray that Benavidez had hurt his right hand, and it was badly swollen.

The judges scored the fight 120-108, 120-108, and 119-109. Boxing News 24 had Benavidez winning by a 120-108 score.

”He tried to just box me, you know? And that’s fine,” Gavril said after the fight.

In round 4, Benavidez caught Gavril with a big right uppercut to the head when he was charging forward. Benavidez then teed off on Gavril with a flurry of heavy shots for the remainder of the round. To Gavril’s credit, he was able to make it out of the round somehow despite taking some blistering shots to the head and body. A lot of fighters would have been knocked out with the punches Gavril took, but he was able to handle getting hit without going down.

Gavril was being pummeled by Benavidez in the first 9 rounds of the fight. It was mostly all slugging from Benavidez in those rounds. It wasn’t until the 10th round that Benavidez started to use his jab to box. Gavril wasn’t pressing the attack hard enough for him to have a chance of winning the fight. He can blame himself for that mistake.

Gavril came on a little bit in round 10 through 12 and was able to land a lot of shots, but he didn’t have a lot of power on them. Benavidez calmly took Gavril’s best punches and spent most of the time jabbing him and catching him with sneaky left hooks and uppercuts to the head.

After the fight, Benavidez was noncommittal when he was asked if he would like to fight WBA Super World super middleweight champion George Groves, who won a wide 12 round unanimous decision over Chris Eubank Jr. in the World Boxing Super Series tournament on Saturday in Manchester, England. Benavidez said he’ll leave it up to his manager Al Haymon to pick out his next opponent. It would be good for Benavidez to move on and not waste another fight facing Gavril again. He’s now beaten him twice in a row. There’s no point in facing him yet again. It would be exciting to see Benavidez face WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez in a unification fight. Unfortunately, Ramirez with Top Rank, and it’s unlikely his promoter Bob Arum will match him against Benavidez due to him being with Haymon.

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results

Image: David Benavidez vs. Ronald Gavril 2 – Results