David Benavidez has emerged as one of the most exciting fighters of recent years.
The Phoenix-born light-heavyweight has remained unbeaten in all 29 of his professional outings, and has held the WBC super middleweight crown on two separate occasions.
Benavidez made the move up to 175lbs in June of this year when he defeated Oleksandr Gvozdyk by unanimous decision to pick up the WBC ‘interim’ light-heavyweight title. The 27-year old is now set to face WBA ‘regular’ title holder David Morrell on February 1 2025 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
‘The Monster’s move up in weight was prompted after failing to land a shot at super-middleweight unified champion Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez’. Although Benavidez moved up one weight division he still made it clear he wanted to face Canelo in the future.
However, in a feature with Cigar Talk, Benavidez revealed his new desire to move up to cruiserweight to face current WBA champion Gilberto RamÃrez after Morrell. Benavidez was always a big 168lb fighter and a move all the way to cruiserweight would seemingly make it much harder for him to ever return back down to super-middleweight, where Canelo would likely demand the fight to happen.
“Right now, honestly, I don’t wanna get bigger than that [cruiserweight] because I already know how hard it is to come back down from after 200lbs.
But what I was thinking, I have my friend Zurdo Ramirez, he just won two titles, so congratulations to him first off. But then I was thinking if we can get that fight next after this one I wouldn’t mind going up to 200 right now & fighting for those belts!”
As for Canelo, his last outing saw him pick up an impressive decision win over Edgar Berlanga Jr and with rumours of a mega fight against Terence Crawford being made in 2025, a potential showdown against Benavidez would look even further away from happening at any time soon.
