Conor Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) was made to look mortal being forced to go the 12-round distance, winning a wide unanimous decision against Peter Dobson (16-1, 9 KOs) in a tune-up fight at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
For the second fight in a row, Benn didn’t look anything like the powerful knockout artist he’d been before. His shots lacked the crushing snap that they had when he was destroying veterans Chris Algieri and Chris Van Heerden.
The 33-year-old Dobson calmly took Benn’s best shots early on and then turned the tables beginning in the third, stunning him with headshots and forcing him to give ground.
The scores:
119-109, 118-110 and 118-110.
Dobson turned the tables on Benn after the third sporadically attacked him, snapping his head back and making him retreat around the ring.
In the seventh round, the referee gave Benn a stern warning for head-butting Dobson, which he had done repeatedly during the round. He didn’t say anything about the rabbit punches that Benn landed in the round and in previous rounds of the fight.
Dobson took a lot of hard shots from Benn, but stayed calm would go after him whenever it seemed like he was ready to be finished off.
Benn looked very uncomfortable with the punches that Dobson was landing in the second half, and it was clear that if the American had been busier, he would have scored a knockdown in the fight.
Conor doesn’t take shots as well as he dishes them out, and that’s a problem he had before he suddenly started looking invincible several years ago.
After the fight, promoter Eddie Hearn spoke of middleweight Chris Eubank Jr., complaining about how he’d turned down a big offer to fight Benn.
That’s the fight Hearn wants for Benn, and it’s probably a good idea he goes in that direction. We saw tonight that Benn is not good enough to compete with the top welterweights like Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, Roiman Villa, Giovani Santillan, or Eimantas Stanionis.
Benn is what you would call an ‘Entertainer’ type of welterweight. He’s fun to watch, but you can’t put him in with any of the top echelon fighters at 147 and expect him to win. Hence, Hearn talking a mile a minute about wanting to match Benn against Eubank Jr.
He knows his limitations, obviously, so he’s going to keep Benn at the domestic level, in the shallow side of the pool, away from the killers. It’s smart and shows that Hearn knows Benn’s lack of talent.
