Finally got around to watching this fight. So far, I'm 8 rounds in and have Hearns winning every round. I'm curious what happens in the second half as this was a majority decision. So far Benitez has done absolutely nothing other than move and avoid punches and offering no offense whatsoever.
People are so overly impressed by Benitez defence they fail to realise like Ali the separation between getting out of the way of a blow and punching back is far too wide for the effort he goes through, bunch of wasted motion… guys like say Toney had a better defence for that reason, evade and counter in a blink not a prolonged sequence into a pot shot right or whatever…
In his prime Benitez could do this but he was already past his prime against Hearns and seemed very puzzled by the problem Hearns height presented. I agree with your point though. Niccolino Locche is a prime example of this. He does nothing offensively but people gush about his defense. Fighters like that arent trying to win a fight.
Benitez had problems anytime he meant another boxer who was as fast or faster then him. And no he was not shot he was outclassed by Hearns as a year earlier Benitez handily had just outboxed Duran.
When was his "prime" though Rocky? Everyone will say "he was shot at this point, or that point", or "he wasn't in shape for this one, or that one". He was 24 when he fought Hearns. I've heard an enormous amount of excuses for Wilfred Benitez. Probably more than any other fighter not named Lennox.
In the ninth round and I believe this is when Hearns originally injured his right hand, As you see, Benitez did a comeback from rounds 9 to 15. Mostly because Hearns limited the use of that hand somewhat afterwards. I have it 144-140 or 145-139 for Tommy and Im a staunch Benitez fan and formerly friends with him lol so..... I will say something about the knockdown: it was a hard call for the ref who does not have access to slow motion technology, like Hagler-Roldan and Spinks-Qawi. In Hagler-Roldan's case, Roldan;s punch grasped Hagler's head and then in the third, Roldan got tangled when Hagler was firing a combination....in Spinks-Qawi case, Spinks' right foot-I think it was the right one but I could be wrong-got tangled with Qawi's as Qawi had landed a punch to the body. In Benitez-Hearns (champion always named first IMO), Hearns slipped as Benitez was throwing a right hand....and it may or may not have grazed Hearns' chin....but again as i said those three cases , and you can add Ali-Wepner too arguably, are cases in which we should not judge the referees too harshly because we dont know what they saw and they did not have our vantage point of view, or television commentators saying it was a slip and specially, the slow motion technologies. I guess its like Ali-Shavers, Ali-Norton 3, Rosario-Ramirez I, Hagler-Leonard, Camacho-Rosario and Trinidad-De La Hoya..its really a matter of observation and appreciation
Yeah he injured it in the 8th, close enough. My memory is Hearns winning almost all of the rounds 10-15 but Benitez taking maybe 7, 8 and 9 in a mini resurgence. I see it around the 10 rounds to 5 mark. Hearns won easily. KD's can be hard to judge for sure, thankfully this wasn't a close fight.
Its well known that Benitez was diagnosed with serious brain damage by the early 80s. Starting with the Hearns fight Benitez never looked like the Benitez of old again. Its not like Hearns beat Benitez up and ruined him. Its one of those rare instances we can point to where there is a clear line between when a fighter looked good and when he was no better than a journeyman.
Benitez just couldn’t deal with Hearns’ physical advantages. Tommy correctly determined that the best way to win was to just keep Benitez on the end of those long punches and not let him mount any offensive of his own. He still slipped punches amazingly, so just take the other aspect of his game away and make him do nothing but slip and defend all night. It worked. Hearns fought very well.
Im not denying that but by this point Benitez couldnt seamlessly weave his offense and defense. When he was caught by Davey Moore and dropped he backed into a corner and beautifully slipped punches but he should have never been caught by Moore to begin with much less stopped by him. Against guys like Cerda and McSwain he won but looked pretty ordinary and neither of those guys were great fighters.
Moore was 2 1/2 years after Hearns and in the meantime Hamsho had bullied him all over the ring. Hearns came in with a great gameplan and all the assets to pull it off perfectly. He was simply too good, too much range. Benitez did about as well as he did vs SRL 3 years prior to Tommy. Both beat him very comfortably in the big scheme of things. Both were lightning fast, by chance.
Hearns’ height and reach completely negated and neutralised Benitez’s skillset, but Benitez’s skillset allowed him to go the distance, just didn’t allow him to have offensive success.
As simple as it was, Emmanuel Steward’s plan for Hearns in this fight was spot-on and took away basically any chance Wilfred might have had … and that was to not engage Benitez when Wilfred backed to the ropes. Benitez’s best offense, quite often, was luring someone to the ropes, slip and counter. It was key in his wins over Palomino and Duran, and Manny wasn’t having any of it. Been a long time since I have seen this one, but I remember Hearns declining Benitez’s invitation to the ropes and backing out to the center of the ring where he could control the distance and geometry of the fight, and it left Wilfred flummoxed. As noted by @AntonioMartin1 Hearns broke his right hand and that allowed Wilfred to do some better work with the Hitman one-handed, but not nearly enough for Benitez to win.
