David Benavidez has earned a big fight before, and this time he ought to get it.
As a super middleweight, David Benavidez earned but never received the true “big fight” at the weight, which would have been a shot at Canelo Alvarez.
As much as someone can in boxing — a sport that works unlike any other in terms of event-to-event and career progression — Benavidez did everything possible to land the fight with Canelo, and while Canelo could be seen as technically correct that Benavidez didn’t have some huge fan base and hadn’t been any top fighters, the idea breaks down a bit in comparison to Canelo’s actual choices.
What had Jaime Munguia or Edgar Berlanga, Canelo’s two opponents in 2024, done that Benavidez hadn’t? Did Munguia really bring some incredible amount more fans to the fight than Benavidez could have? Berlanga certainly didn’t. And neither of them had quite as good a resume as Benavidez, a multiple-time titleholder.
Benavidez has had rocky times in his career. He’s been stripped of world titles twice, once for testing positive for cocaine, once for missing weight in the 2020 “bubble,” but he has learned, he has matured, he has grown. He is not the same man he was a few years ago, and he’s also not the same fighter.
Now two fights into his campaign as a light heavyweight, Benavidez (30-0, 24 KO) is coming off of a strong win over David Morrell Jr, coming off the canvas to earn the decision win over 12 rounds. The 28-year-old isn’t going to turn his sights back to Canelo, who is lined up to face Terence “Bud” Crawford in September, so the quest for the elusive Big Fight should now be Benavidez attempting to land a bout with the winner of the Feb. 22 rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.
That could be tough, of course. As much as boxing is starting to consolidate, for better or worse, under Turki Alalshikh’s Riyadh Season banner, there are still outliers, and the biggest of the lot is Premier Boxing Champions, for whom Benavidez has been a loyal soldier for many years.
Benavidez could certainly get the fight; this isn’t like before, and if Alalshikh is willing to pay, we’ve seen PBC is willing to send fighters over for cards. But their own deal with Amazon’s Prime Video is already almost pay-per-view exclusive and running dangerously low on star power, and it frankly feels like just a matter of time before PBC’s names move to the Riyadh group, including top players like Benavidez and Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
Benavidez in particular seems likely because we know he wants the biggest fights and isn’t at all afraid to test himself and take the hard road if necessary; if he were, he would not have fought the dangerous Morrell, whose own name value was relatively quite low for a PPV main event fight.
Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KO) and Bivol (23-1, 12 KO) may not be available this year, though. If Bivol wins the rematch, which is entirely possible, a rubber match between the two could happen later in 2025. If Beterbiev wins again, there really is every chance he might consider hanging up the gloves at age 40, having done pretty much everything he could have set out to do as a professional boxer. His injury history contributes to those odds, too — if Beterbiev goes 2-0 against Bivol, an excellent fighter, and has confirmed himself so clearly as the undisputed champ, will he want to keep pushing it until his body finally betrays him during a fight instead of between?
Benavidez does have time, though he’s surely tired of waiting around for that marquee call. The bigger question may be the time and desire of Beterbiev or Bivol emerging from their rivalry, whether it’s two fights or three.
And if it’s neither of them, it may simply wind up a division there for Benavidez to take over, piece-by-piece, sort of the way we saw Terence Crawford do at welterweight, having never taken the torch from the prior top star, Floyd Mayweather.
In the meantime, David Benavidez has simply continued to prove himself a viable top fighter with star quality if not yet star opportunity. Either he’ll get that chance and try to take it by force, or he’ll have to just keep building fight to fight. At this stage, don’t doubt his ability to do it one way or the other.
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