Dan Rafael recently claimed that Denzel Bentley, who went from interim to full WBO middleweight champion following Janibek Alimkhanuly’s departure from the division, would vacate his belt and jump ship from Queensberry to Zuffa Boxing in the face of a low-paying mandatory defense against Yoenli Hernandez.
My first thought was “lame, but I get it.” It wasn’t nearly as egregious as Keyshawn Davis turning down over $2 million to fight Devin Haney or Hamzah Sheeraz dumping his belt and $750k rather than
fight Janibek Alimkhanuly, both cases where the aggrieved parties’ own promoters won the bid. Bentley (22-3-1, 18 KO) was slated to make less than $200k as the promotional B-side against Hernandez’s (11-0, 9 KO) hilariously lopsided risk/reward ratio.
As it turns out, Rafael was only half right. Lance Pugmire revealed that rather than vacate, Bentley filed an appeal with the WBO to make a voluntary defense instead, and Zuffa has now announced a clash between Bentley and Shane Mosley Jr (23-5, 13 KO) on their November 7th Chris Billam-Smith vs Chev Clarke show in London.
Bentley took to Sky Sports to kinda-not-really explain himself.
“I’m very game. I like to have a fight. I’ve got a very good knockout ratio, you can expect knockouts. Most importantly I am still currently the WBO middleweight champion.
“I know everything that’s gone on online and all the rumours [that he could be stripped of belt]. My team has put in an appeal, that appeal has gone through. We are hoping that we can get through this appeal and we get to defend this WBO title against a game, ranked opponent too.
“The son of a legend, he’s there with a chip on his shoulder, trying to prove everyone wrong who believes he can’t be as successful as his dad. So he’s very dangerous. He’s got real motivation and he’s going to come in there and put on a great fight.”
Yeah, no. This is loser behavior, made especially egregious by the fact that Bentley was handed his belt on a silver platter; if you want a voluntary defense, you finagle that before the purse bid. You don’t wait until afterwards to run the numbers and decide on a lighter touch. Nobody forced Queensberry to keep their wallets shut and let Hernandez’s promoters win with a minimum bid. Hell, nobody forced Zuffa to no-show the bid; there was nothing stopping Bentley’s news besties from ponying up the cash needed to make Bentley act like an actual champion.
Gustavo Olivieri occasionally shows a spine and has highlighted the fact that a mandatory defense is hideously overdue, so hopefully the WBO reacts appropriately by stripping Bentley and pitting Hernandez against Tim Tszyu or Vito Mielnicki Jr for the vacant belt.
