Despite intense lobbying for a fight with Canelo Alvarez, David Benavidez wasn’t able to secure a mega bout with the face of boxing at super middleweight.
That forced him to deploy plan B, which has Benavidez making inroads at the next division up, light heavyweight. The 28-year-old began that trek on a solid note, scoring a unanimous decision over Oleksandr Gvozdyk at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in June.
The victory made Benavidez the WBC interim 175-pound world champion, putting him in line to contend for the undisputed light heavyweight crown, and that brings us to DAZN’s third New Year’s Resolution for boxing in 2025:
For Benavidez to challenge the winner of the Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol rematch for the undisputed light heavyweight crown
Currently, undisputed glory resides with Beterbiev, courtesy of his majority decision over Bivol in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in October.
Beterbiev and Bivol will engage once again in a highly-anticipated sequel set for February 22 in Riyadh, and live on DAZN.
Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) must defeat David Morrell on February 1 and if successful, he’d gain the Cuban’s WBA “Regular” light heavyweight world title, putting him in an even better position to collide with the Beterbiev-Bivol 2 winner.
“I feel like I’d beat both of them,” Benavidez told DAZN News late last year. “I know Bivol really well. I’ve sparred him a lot. I have a lot of respect for him.
“Just because I’ve sparred him, [I’m] not saying he’s an easy fighter or none of that,” he continued. “I know what I can do with him.”
Benavidez added: “I want to fight the best. I’ve had a lot of experience, so now, it’s just time to really push myself and go for greatness so that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
While Benavidez moving on from a dream bout with Canelo might be reluctant, contending for an undisputed crown is certainly a consolation enough to whet his appetite.
“These,” he said, “are the challenges I want.”
(Esther Lin/PBC)
Either prong of this fork in the road would regale boxing fans. A bout with the undefeated Beterbiev (21-0, 20 knockouts) would test Benavidez’s capability of overwhelming the 39-year-old Russian with incessant output.
A fight with Bivol would allow Benavidez to pull back the curtains on their closed sparring sessions and devastate the Russian with powerful punching volume under a stadium’s bright lights.
Either scenario would present Benavidez with the avenue to punch his way into boxing superstardom and history by becoming just the 10 man to reach undisputed eminence in the modern four-belt era. (Terence Crawford, Naoya Inoue, and Oleksandr Usyk are the only men to accomplish the feat in two different weight divisions, while Claressa Shields did the same amongst the women and before any of the men).
Such a bout likely will not carry the life-changing purse that a Canelo fight would, but he emerges victorious against Morrell first and the Beterbiev-Bivol 2 winner thereafter and his 2025 will douse the demands for a fight with the Mexican superstar with that much more with gasoline.