David Benavidez will headline just outside his hometown for his next fight.
A venue has been secured for the previously announced May 21 interim WBC super middleweight title fight between Phoenix’s Benavidez and Montreal’s David Lemieux. The Showtime-televised main event will take place at Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona, roughly 30 minutes from Benavidez’ Phoenix hometown.
Representatives from Gila Rivera Arena confirmed the location along with an exclusive ticket pre-sale beginning Wednesday afternoon.
Benavidez (25-0, 22KOs) returned home for his last fight, a seventh-round stoppage of Philadelphia’s Kryone Davis last November 13 at Footprint Center, the home of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. The same venue was once under consideration for the May 21 event before opting to take the show to Glendale. The Footprint Center has since filled up its schedule, hosting an Arena Football League home game for the Arizona Rattlers on that date.
The fight with Lemieux (43-4, 36KOs) was approved by the WBC during its annual convention last November in Mexico City. It comes in lieu of Benavidez—a former two-time WBC super middleweight champ—hoping to have enforced his mandatory challenger status, with his old belt currently occupied by undisputed champion Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez (57-1-2, 39KOs) who will next face WBA light heavyweight titlist Dmitry Bivol (19-0, 11KOs).
A different reason was cited for Alvarez being permitted to avoid a mandatory title defense. Head trainer/manager Eddy Reynoso sought permission for the pound-for-pound king to next challenge WBC cruiserweight titlist Ilunga ‘Junior’ Makabu, which the WBC granted. Sampson Lewkowicz, Benavidez’s manager requested for Benavidez—the number-one ranked contender—to enter an interim title fight, which also came with the WBC’s blessing.
Benavidez first won the full title in September 2017, making one successful title defense before being stripped of the belt after testing positive for cocaine through the WBC’s Clean Boxing Program random drug testing. The unbeaten rising star regained his belt in a ninth-round technical knockout of Anthony Dirrell, with plans of an April 2020 homecoming versus Alexis Angulo ruined by the pandemic.
The opportunity never came back around for Benavidez, who was stripped of his title for a second time after failing to make weight ahead of his rescheduled August 2020 fight with Angulo. Benavidez stopped Angulo after the tenth-round of what was essentially a non-title fight. Two wins have followed including his aforementioned stoppage of Davis last November in his first fight in Arizona since May 2015.
Lemieux enters having won eight of his last nine since losing his IBF middleweight title to Gennadiy Golovkin in their October 2015 unification bout at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A second title bid during that stretch saw Lemieux drop a twelve-round decision to then-unbeaten WBO middleweight titlist Billy Joe Saunders in December 2018 in his Montreal hometown. Four wins have followed, including a second-round knockout of David Zegarra in a stay-busy fight last June in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Benavidez-Lemieux was previously announced earlier this month as part of Showtime’s spring/summer lineup, though without a venue listed for the scheduled 12-round interim title fight.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
