David Benavidez plans on working hard for the next year or two to earn a fight against Canelo Alvarezand beat him to take the position he’s in as a top fighter.
Unortunately for Benavidez lost his best bargaining chip to get a fight against Canelo when his WBc super middleweight title was strippedfrom him after he failed to make weight for his last fight.
Benavidez (23-0, 20 KOs) realizes he’s not in the lead position to get a fight against Alvarez (54-1-2, 36 KOs), but he’s going to work to put pressure on him to get in that spot.
The 24-year-old Benavidez feels that fighters like Canelo are making a mistake by fighting him now while he’s still really young because in three years, he’ll be even better, and they’ll have missed their opportunity.
Above all, Benavidez wants to take Canelo’s scalp to go down in the history books as one of the greats, but he just needs the chance. Like many, Benavidez isn’t impressed with what he’s seen from Canelo’s recent opponents Sergey Kovalev andCallum Smith, who fought scared and treated him with way too much respect.
Benavidez says former WBA super middleweight champion Callum (27-1, 19 KOs) looked weak and appeared to gas out after three rounds against Alvarez last Saturday night. He’s not surprised that happened, though, seeing that Smith was given the fight with Canelo on four weeks’ notice.
Benavidez argues that Smith really only had three weeks of training, as the final week was him traveling to San Antonio, Texas for the fight, and using that time to cut weight to get to the 168-lb limit.
He sees that as a sign of Canelo showing no respect for Smith as a champion, and he doesn’t understand how his promoter Eddie Hearn allowed that to happen to his own fighter.
BENAVIDEZ TO WORK HARD TO GET CANELO FIGHT
“I’m going to fight in March. I don’t know who I’m going to fight yet, but we’re just staying ready,’ said David Benavidez to ESNEWS. “I’m looking to have a great victory.
understand I’m not going to be the front runner to get that fight, but I’m still here and will still be fighting to get that fight,” Benavidez said about Canelo.
“Whoever I have to go through, it doesn’t matter. If I have to get my title back, that’s what I’m going to do. Canelo is a great fighter, but I feel like all these dudes that have been fighting him lately, Kovalev, Callum Smith, they’ve been fighting scared.
“I think they have too much respect for him. And I don’t know what it is. I want to put myself up there in a spot in the history books of boxing, and the way I’ll do that is by beating Canelo.
“I’m going to work extremely hard in the next three years as hard as possible to make this fight happen. When I do get this fight, everybody that tells me I’m crazy and that Canelo is too much for me, I’m going to prove everybody wrong,” said Benavidez.
If Canelo wanted to fight Benavidez, he would have done it a long time ago, but he hasn’t. When Benavidez was the WBC 168-lb champion, Canelo could have fought him but he didn’t. Canelo chose to fight WBA ‘regular’ champion Rocky Fielding in 2018 for a belt.
It was only after Benavidez ost his WBC title last August after coming in two pounds overweight for his defense against Roamer Alexis Angulo that Canelo showed interest in fighting for the belt.