David Benavidez has long had the ability of a top-tier fighter.
It was there when he was 20 years old and won his first world title, beating Ronald Gavril for the vacant WBC super middleweight title in 2017. It was still there when he was stripped of that belt for testing positive for cocaine. And it was still there when he won it back, and when he missed weight and was stripped again in 2020.
And it was there when he came back from that and won the interim version of that title and tried, desperately,
to get Canelo Alvarez to fight him. When he starched David Lemieux. When he beat Caleb Plant in what was the biggest fight Benavidez could land in 2023. When he took Demetrius Andrade apart, and when he gave up on the Canelo chase at 168 and moved up to 175, winning another interim belt and hoping to get Dmitry Bivol in the ring for the real thing, but Bivol vacated instead.
It was certainly there tonight, when he decimated Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez to win the WBA and WBO cruiserweight titles, jumping up another 25 lbs in weight to take the biggest and best challenge he could actually find.
Canelo, repeatedly, said that Benavidez wasn’t a big enough star. A lot of people think Canelo simply didn’t want to fight someone young, vicious, and skilled like Benavidez. Bivol wasn’t fighting anyone — and to be fair was coming off of a surgery — and maybe we’ll see Bivol vs Benavidez this year, now that Dmitry is close to back in action.
Canelo, coming off of a loss to Terence “Bud” Crawford last year, will be back in September to challenge Christian Mbilli for the WBC belt at 168. If he wins there, Benavidez should be on his mind for 2027.
But will it happen? Benavidez still wants it. He wants Bivol, too. And he’s earned those fights. He has done everything asked of him, he has repeatedly taken the best fights he could get, and he has dominated in pretty much all of them. He beat David Morrell last year, and that was another guy not many people were lining up to fight. Morrell was kind of high-risk, low-reward, even; he’s not a big name. Benavidez fought him anyway. It was the toughest guy he could get to fight him.
Boxing is not like other sports, those more in the mainstream. Nobody can actually make anyone fight anyone. There can be consequences — titles stripped for saying no to a mandatory challenger, that sort of thing — but the reality is that star power drives a lot of the decision-making.
Maybe Canelo had an argument that Benavidez wasn’t a big star. It’d be a better argument if Canelo hadn’t spent that time fighting guys like Edgar Berlanga and William Scull instead of Benavidez, but let’s be kind and say Canelo had a point.
Does he have one anymore? Christian Mbilli isn’t as big a star as David Benavidez. Realistically, not that many people are. Benavidez may not be a mega-seller on pay-per-view, but this also isn’t the Mayweather/Pacquiao era of pay-per-view. That game has changed.
Compared to the field, David Benavidez stands out in every way. He’s headlined big arena shows and several pay-per-view shows now. Who else can Canelo or Bivol fight who can say the same?
David Benavidez is, as others said in our live discussion of Saturday’s fight, a born fighter. It’s in his bones. You can see it in his eyes. You hear the legitimacy in his voice. He means what he says and he backs it up. You see it in the way he moves, the way he throws punches. You feel his sincere desire to be great and to take challenges.
It’s time for David Benavidez to get the marquee fights he wants. He deserves it. He’s earned it. And if those guys won’t take it, expect Benavidez to keep finding the best opponents he can get to step into the ring with him. He’s got options with belts at 175 and cruiserweight. He’s got some leverage. In the time he’s been “avoided” by the biggest names he wants to fight, he’s simply gone out and made himself a bigger, more bankable star, and proven himself as a great champion of this sport.
He has been the sort of fighter that fight fans want fighters to be. He deserves the acclaim, the praise, and the big fights.
