On Monday, BoxingScene’s Lance Pugmire published a piece in which he spoke to Jose Benavidez Snr on his son David’s likely next move after his fight with Anthony Yarde on November 22. The names mentioned: Dmitry Bivol, Artur Beterbiev, Jai Opetaia and Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez.
The likeliest, Benavidez Snr said, was Ramirez given the talks they’d had.
Benavidez-Ramirez isn’t a bad fight by any means. Benavidez is more skilled, but Ramirez is bigger and has looked better at cruiserweight than he did at 175lbs. It might even be the biggest test of Benavidez’s career thus far.
But it’s not the right one. Not next, anyway.
Benavidez, 30-0 (24 KOs), has seen potentially career-defining fights slip away in the last few years. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s shameless duck of him is the biggest missed opportunity, given Alvarez’s star power and the length of time Benavidez was his most deserving challenger. (It’s easy to forget, following Terence Crawford’s superb dissection of Alvarez in September, that more people wanted to see Alvarez-Benavidez beforehand.)
So Benavidez moved up to light heavyweight, where mouthwatering matchups seemed to await. Benavidez’s volume punching against Artur Beterbiev’s historically heavy hands? That fight couldn’t miss.
Or Benavidez against Dmitry Bivol and his technically sound one-twos and counter right hands, made more enticing by the history of Benavidez hurting Bivol in sparring as a teenager? Sign me up.
Yet those fights haven’t materialized either.
The Beterbiev one might well be entirely dead – he’s now almost 41 years old and looked a little worse in his second fight with Bivol than in the first. There’s no guarantee an elite fighter remains.
That leaves Bivol, who at 34 years old remains in his prime and has every attribute to give Benavidez the stiffest test of his career. But Bivol had back surgery in August and likely has a trilogy with Beterbiev to wrap up before he gets to Benavidez, assuming he wants to.
Zurdo, too, has a more attractive opponent in Jai Opetaia (a long-anticipated bout that would unify the cruiserweight division but has failed to materialize). Why not first establish the clear best fighters in the 175lbs and 200lbs divisions, instead of pairing someone who might be the best light heavyweight against someone who might be the best cruiserweight? If Benavidez could take the remaining light heavyweight belts off Bivol and Ramirez acquired Opetaia’s strap, the bout between them would be exponentially bigger.
If the Bivol fight isn’t available to Benavidez, it’s hard to blame him for considering a championship fight in yet another weight division. But it’s faintly tragic that a fighter of his skills (who else that size can match that hand speed) and resume (his current run of wins over Caleb Plant, Demetrius Andrade, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, and David Morrell is about as good of a run as any active fighter has had) might fail to land the big fight in not one but two different weight divisions.
Even if Bivol and Beterbiev aren’t available right now, Benavidez has the opportunity to broaden his resume at light heavyweight. He’s only had two fights in the division so far. Yarde will be his third. Opponents like Callum Smith and Joshua Buatsi are known quantities, but beating them, or taking the ‘0’s of Albert Ramirez or Ali Izmailov, would further solidify Benavidez as the boogeyman at 175. Eventually, Bivol would be forced to either fight Benavidez or relinquish his belts, leaving Benavidez the sole ruler of a weight division for the first time.
Benavidez has already said that he’ll never go back down to 168lbs, even for Canelo. Examples of cruiserweights coming down to 175lbs are few and far between – so Benavidez-Ramirez might also mark the end of the possibility of Benavidez-Bivol, as well as Benavidez’s potential to rule the division.
If Benavidez and Ramirez do square up in May next year, it would certainly attract viewers, and Benavidez winning a belt in a division 32lbs north of where he started out would certainly be meaningful. But it also feels like a matchup that has to be sold rather than one to cry out for, like Benavidez-Bivol.
Let’s hope that fight can come together before “The Mexican Monster” has left yet another weight class behind in search of his defining dance partner.
