Demetrius Andrade is finally getting his first big fight after 15 years as a professional against WBC interim super middleweight champion David Benavidez on November 25th on Showtime PPV.
It’s important that Andrade (32-0, 19 KOs) makes the most of this opportunity because this might be the end of the line for him if he gets blown out of totally dominated by ‘The Mexican Monster’ Benavidez (27-0, 23 KOs).
Benavidez-Andrade will be taking place at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas. The chief support bout could be Jermall Charlo vs. Jose Benavidez Jr.
Andrade must look good
“As a pro, he hasn’t lost yet. He doesn’t have a great resume in terms of ex-world champions and high-level fights, but he’s figured out a way to win, and I think he’s a prideful guy,” said Stephen ‘Breadman’ Edwards to MillCity Boxing about Demetrius Andrade, going into his fight next month against David Benavidez on November 25th.
“He doesn’t want to go his whole career, and then I think he’s about 34, 35 right, and he doesn’t want to step up and then lose, and everybody says, ‘Well, this is why you haven’t fought anybody.’ So I expect him to fight his butt off. He has pedigree.”
Andrade has never had an opportunity for a big fight against the likes of Canelo Alvarez, Gennadiy Golovkin, Billy Joe Saunders, and the Charlo brothers. Those are guys that he wanted to fight, but they were never interested.
In recent years, Andrade has been criticized for turning down fights against Janibek Alimkhanuly and Zach Parker. Those were fights that he probably could have won but opted not to take them for whatever reason.
“David [Benavidez] is a great fighter, but David wasn’t a great amateur, so it’s things that you can do to David as far as scoring points that people don’t realize because he wasn’t a great amateur.
“His dad did a great job with him, but he learned how to fight in a pro system and in the gyms. He doesn’t have that extensive amateur pedigree. So that’s why, for as good as David is, you can score many points on David,” continued Edwards about Benavidez.
Benavidez’s volume punching
David kind of screws you up with the volume and how mean he is and how nasty he is, and the pressure he puts on you,” said Stephen. “I expect Demetrius to be right with him. It’s a matter of whether Demetrius withstands the pressure in the second half of the fight and if he can hold up to the body punches and, you know, David making the ring small.
Andrade won’t be able to match Benavidez’s high work rate if he’s standing in front of him, looking to slug it out. The only type of fighter that can stand and trade with Benavidez would be someone with massive power like David Morrell Jr., but he’s wisely avoided the talented Cuban.
“I don’t think Demetrius is going to have a problem with scoring points,” said Edwards. “It’s a matter of your durability, and can you sustain it? It’s a different fight with David. You’re going to get your points, your pound of flesh. It’s what you can do once the fight settles down.
“So that’s what we’re going to find out about Demetrius. We’re going to find out about his physical toughness and his ability to be composed under pressure, but his pedigree and his winning ways are going to allow him to score points and win his share of rounds.
“We don’t even know how he’s going to react because we haven’t seen him with this level guy. I think the best fighter he’s probably ever faced was Jack Culcay, and that was a pretty decent fight. Many years ago, Culcay was a solid junior middleweight of about seven or eight years ago, but I think that’s probably the best fighter that Demetrius has fought.
“So that’s the problem in this fight, but I expect Demetrius to score a lot of points. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were up after six. The problem is the second half of the fight, Benavidez coming downhill on you, hitting you to the body, running them combinations off. He’s a mean, mean, vicious dude who does not stop,” said Stephen.
Will Benavidez be overtrained again?
“The problem that I see with David is can he overcome Demetrius’ amateur pedigree and will he have a little bit of a let down because he put a lot into that fight with Caleb [Plant],” said Edwards. “He got into the best shape of his life, came in at one hundred sixty-six pounds, and I’m sure it was a brutal camp for him.
Benavidez looked like a classic example of a fighter who had overtrained for his last fight against Caleb Plant. There were reports that he’d been sparring 15 rounds, and had back-to-back training camps, which left him so thin-looking that he was nothing like the fighter that had whipped David Lemieux.
It’s been ages since Andrade fought in the 2008 Olympics, and it’s unclear whether his amateur pedigree still accounts for anything after fifteen years in the pro ranks.
If Andrade were facing Benavidez after first turning pro, you could argue that his amateur pedigree would be a big advantage, but he’s 35, and he’s not a spring chicken.
“Then, with his style and what he has to do to get in shape, guys like that sometimes fall off a cliff,” said Edwards. “So I want to see if he can come back and be as sharp as he was for Caleb. That was a hard camp. David went through a lot in that camp.
“He trained hard. I was hearing stories about him training 14 or 15 rounds with different sparring partners. He had a mental coach. That was a lot of stress on him, and now he’s coming back again. So I want to see if he could be that [same person].
“That was his Super Bowl against Caleb. They’re cool now, but he hated Caleb, and he wanted to really get into that fight. You got to see if he can come back and have a similar camp for Demetrius,” said Edwards.
“Demetrius gets to see a lot of the little things that Caleb did to David successfully, and he gets to pick on that. That’s why consistency and being able to win at the top level is a testament to a fighter’s greatness because once the tape gets out on you, and once a guy has a good night on you, then everybody, all the coaches and the fighters, they get to see it, and they get to study it, and then they get to try to improve on whatever you did to them,” said Edwards.
Andrade can study video on Benavidez
“So Caleb was able to do little things against David. So now Demetrius will be able to look at that video and say, ‘Okay, I can do this, and I can do that, and here’s where David surges,” said Stephen.
Caleb Plant had a lot of success last March against Benavidez, and there’s a tons of video that Andrade & his team can pour over to isolate flaws in the game of ‘The Mexican Monster’ that they can exploit on November 25th.
Plant was making Benavidez look silly through the first six rounds, and if he didn’t gas out, he would have surely won. You want to give Benavidez a break by saying that maybe he was weight drained or something, but if that wasn’t the case, he’s going to be at the mercy of Demetrius.
“So, everything is interconnected in boxing, and I expect a good fight. I don’t think Demetrius is going to come in here and lay down because if he does, his career is going to kind of be looked at as a fraud. He’s a prideful guy,” said Edwards.
“He wants to win, he likes to win, and he’s been begging for opportunities. He can’t go in this fight and just get blitzed and get and get put out because everything he did from the time he turned pro up until now won’t be looked at as real.
“He doesn’t have to win, but he has to give a good account of himself, and I think he knows that. So I expect a really good fight,” said Edwards.
