David Benavidez takes some time to talk to Fight Hype about what he makes of his past inability to secure a fight with Canelo Alvarez and whether he thinks that may ever come off in the future. Benavidez also mentions that he’ll be looking at a cruiserweight title opportunity against Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez early next year should everything go according to plan in his upcoming title defense against Anthony Yarde.
Benavidez on his thoughts on if he’ll ever fight Canelo
“I don’t think [a Canelo fight] is 100% dead. To be honest with you, until Canelo retires
that fight is always going to be looming. That fight makes sense. It makes sense in every way it happens, so in my head it’s not going to not happen because even if we wait another three years it’s still going to be one of the biggest fights in boxing.
“But also Canelo knows that I’m not playing games with him. I’m not playing games with anybody. If anything he knows this fight between me and him is inevitable and when it happens it’s going to be like an Oscar De La Hoya vs Chavez.
“So in my opinion it’s always going to be an option, I’m not really focused on that myself. I’m focused on Dmitry Bivol, Artur Beterbiev, Zurdo Ramirez and anything else that comes after that. And then after those fights get done then maybe then is the timing is going to be perfect to make the Canelo fight.”
On whether he believes he’ll get a Ramirez fight early next year
“Yeah, definitely. That’s what it’s looking like. First things first, we got to take care of business next Saturday. But like I say, I’m just trying to make the biggest fights happen. I have 100% confidence in myself that I can beat anybody here at 175 and at cruiserweight, so if I get an opportunity to fight Zurdo Ramirez next for two more titles, like you said, I’m a legacy fighter. There’s no way in hell I’m going to turn down a two-title fight int he cruiserweight division. So that’s definitely something that looks like it can manifest itself, but first things first, we need to take care of Anthony Yarde and if we can get that next year, that’s exactly what we’re going to go into.”
