While David Benavidez has yet to land the defining fight he craves, he’s again landed a significant enough opponent to make him headline news in the boxing world.
Although Benavidez has not come close to fighting Canelo Alvarez, his longtime target, he has fought well enough and against good enough fighters to get himself involved in most pound-for-pound conversations. Furthermore, his talent, ambition, industry and volume has been glaringly apparent as he’s torn through the ranks.
On Saturday, up at cruiserweight, he likely faces his stiffest test as a pro yet.
Not only is he moving up from 175lbs after only being a light heavyweight since 2024, he is also facing Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez who is, depending on which camp you are in, the No. 1 or 2 cruiserweight in the world; something that could only be decided by fighting Jai Opetaia.
Though Canelo plans to be ringside, it is Benavidez and Zurdo who are carrying the Hispanic Cinco De Mayo weekend in Las Vegas with their eagerly-awaited bout at the T-Mobile Arena.
Benavidez enters off a couple of 2025 wins having outscored Cuban David Morrell and then dispatched Londoner Anthony Yarde in seven rounds in a one-sided fight in November.
Yarde is a brave and good fighter, but he didn’t trouble “The Monster.”
Ramirez, who won the WBO title from Chris Billam-Smith at the end of 2024 to add to the WBA belt he’d claimed from Arsen Goulamirian in his previous bout, was a comfortable enough winner over Yuniel Dorticos last June.
There was talk that he’d face someone like Robin Safar earlier this year to keep busy but it was decided, probably sensibly, that he’d wait for Benavidez and not risk what is one of the biggest fights of the year so far.
It directly follows the Japanese collision between Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani and comes a week before heavyweights Fabio Wardley and Daniel Dubois clash atop a Queensberry event in Britain. And we’ve often been told in recent years these are the fights that can’t happen without a Saudi check being signed. PBC and Golden Boy have combined to make the Vegas showpiece happen.
Ramirez will do his best to give Benavidez a hostile reception at 200lbs. He has lost just once in 49 fights, and that was late in 2022 to light-heavyweight kingpin Dmitry Bivol. Almost a year on, the Mexican weighed 191lbs when he came back and beat Joe Smith in Vegas and that set him on his way to the cruiserweight belts. A southpaw who is tidy on the inside and who has plenty of tools at his disposal at range, he’s 48-1 (30 KOs) since turning pro in 2009.
Benavidez, unable to land Canelo at 168lbs, moved up to 175lbs in June 2024 to outscore former 175lbs champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk. It was a workmanlike and, frankly, unspectacular performance. Benavidez didn’t come close to stopping the veteran Ukrainian and actually tired down the stretch.
If he got away with moving up in weight and having a poor second half that time, he might not be so fortunate on this occasion. However, at 31-0 (25 KOs), there are signs of a more mature and patient Benavidez.
At 29, the rounds he’s had with the likes of Demetrius Andrade, Caleb Plant, Anthony Dirrell, Kyrone Davis, and J’Leon Love make for a solid education, and that’s even before you get to the sparring tales, of him working with Gennady Golovkin when he was just a teenage up-and-comer and “GGG” was both established and feared. There’s yet to be a sparring story doing the rounds of Benavidez being tamed, and he’s spoken confidently of beating both Bivol and, yes, Ramirez, based on having shared rounds with them both behind closed doors during his ascent.
“I got five months training in this training camp because I knew Zurdo Ramirez is a great fighter,” Benavidez said this week. “He's a great champion. We did a lot of rounds with him back then, and I know he's gonna come to fight, you know, big respects to all these guys over here.
“With that being said, it's time to go to war. And when David Benavidez goes to war, he doesn't shy away from anything. When I see the fire, I put myself in the fire to get the best version of myself, and I'm not scared of nobody.”
That much is clear. You can tell he’d take the Canelo fight, still, in a heartbeat. But Ramirez must come first, even if all indicators point to this being one and done – for now, at least – at cruiserweight.
While it is clear Benavidez is a star attraction, Ramirez has a significant following himself and nearly 4m follow him on Instagram alone. Sure, that means nothing in a fight, but in this day and age it is good currency when it comes to negotiating.
“I’m the champ. I don't feel disrespect. I just train hard to put on a great show to prove myself and prepare to be still champion,” said Ramirez. “He will try, and I will try, I will do it, too. Saturday, everyone will see us.”
Benavidez shared some of their old sparring footage on his socials this week – a mere 815,000 followers on IG for those keeping score – and it illustrated that we could be in for something special. The clips show, basically, one fighter covering up and the other teeing off before they change places, with the other covering up and then defender turning attacker.
You can’t be sure Benavidez will have the power to dent Ramirez. Billam-Smith is a stiff hitter and he didn’t even make Ramirez blink. The Bournemouth man also spoke of how surprised he was by Ramirez’s defensive abilities, to not just block ones and twos but to use his hand positioning to parry and block second and third waves of attacks.
But Benavidez’s handspeed might not allow the Mexican to do that. His volume, too, will be hard for Ramirez to control.
I reckon Ramirez will have him moments and might surprise many with how effective he is. But Benavidez, who is keen to be seen as the world’s leading fighter, is riding the crest of a wave. He’s not hit his peak yet while the 34-year-old Ramirez might have enjoyed his best year in 2024, unifying the titles he defends tonight.
With that in mind, the pick is for Benavidez to do enough with cards of around 7-5 or 8-4 in his favour, but there’s a feeling, here at least, that there could be knockdowns, twists, turns and, dare I say it, controversy.
