David Benavidez keeps picking the wrong fights
David Benavidez is an effective, if not excellent, boxer who has the one factor that haunts far too many boxers on the highest degree lately: Abjectly mediocre opposition.
On paper, Benavidez’s combat with David Lemieux on Saturday in Glendale, Arizona, for the interim WBC tremendous middleweight title (Why? Why? Why?) ought to have been a hotly anticipated one. Benavidez was ranked one and Lemieux two within the division.
However the one factor the sanctioning our bodies — and this goes for the WBO, WBA and IBF along with the WBC on this case — are good at is manipulating their rankings. Is there anybody on God’s inexperienced Earth outdoors of Lemieux’s household and shut associates who believed Lemieux had executed something to be deserving of such a preposterously excessive rating?
In case you don’t bear in mind, after dropping to Billy Joe Saunders in a middleweight title combat on Dec. 16, 2017, Lemieux received 5 in a row. The rationale you in all probability didn’t bear in mind is that these wins have been over Karim Achour, Spike O’Sullivan, Max Bursak, Francy Ntetu and David Zegarra.
Lemieux had as a lot enterprise preventing for a world title — even a bogus interim one — than I might getting into the NBA Slam Dunk contest.
This, although, isn’t about Lemieux a lot as it’s about Benavidez and why he’s preventing second-rate opposition so incessantly.
Showtime’s Jim Grey is rightly going into the Worldwide Boxing Corridor of Fame subsequent month for his typically sensible work within the ring interviewing fighters. It wasn’t his best hour, although, when he interviewed Benavidez after Benavidez stopped Lemieux within the third spherical of a combat that ought to by no means have been booked.
Grey’s query made it sound like Canelo Alvarez, who holds the WBC tremendous middleweight belt, was by some means avoiding Benavidez.
“Properly, they nearly can’t keep away from you now,” Grey mentioned to Benavidez of the elites at 168. “Both there’s going to be a trip, a vacating of that title by Canelo, or sooner or later, he’s going to should combat you.”
Let’s remind Grey, and everybody else, that within the final two years, Benavidez has fought Roamer Alexis Angulo, Ronald Ellis, Kyrone Davis and Lemieux whereas throughout that interval Alvarez fought world champion Callum Smith, obligatory challenger Avni Yildirim, world champion Saunders, world champion Caleb Plant and world champion Dmitry Bivol.
One will not be like the opposite.
That mentioned, Benavidez has an infinite quantity of expertise and desires to check himself in opposition to somebody who may be aggressive with him.
The one hole in Canelo’s checklist of opposition just lately is Yildirim, a calmly regarded opponent who didn’t deserve within the least to be the obligatory contender however who received the chance nonetheless. He surrendered meekly on the first signal of hassle in opposition to Canelo and now, not fairly 15 months after their combat, is rated fortieth within the WBC’s most up-to-date tremendous middleweight rankings.
The sanctioning our bodies might enhance the fan expertise of this sport a lot in the event that they give up giving out titles as in the event that they have been breath mints and in the event that they precisely ranked all fighters in a division, together with the champions of different organizations.
There was little cause for Benavidez to combat Lemieux and it was all the time going to end up the best way it did. Give Lemieux credit score: He was outclassed and outgunned, however he hung in there and was firing away for so long as he might till referee Harvey Dock stepped in.
He was simply in approach over his head on this bout, and the truth that it was for a title says extra concerning the group that sanctioned it than it does about Lemieux.
Alvarez introduced Monday he’ll face Gennadiy Golovkin next. Benavidez must combat one of many different elite tremendous middleweights — Plant can be a nice alternative — to show that, as soon as and for all, he belongs in that spot.
He brings loads to the desk and if he retains his head on straight, he has the potential to get loads higher than he’s proper now. However sooner or later, he, like all fighters, must be pressured to carry out in opposition to an equally expert opponent if he’s going to name himself one of the best.
This has been an incredible yr for boxing, and it’s going to get higher. However we will’t take our foot off of the accelerator as a result of it solely succeeds when the fitting fights are made persistently.
Put Benavidez in subsequent with somebody like Plant — and even Jermall Charlo if he strikes as much as 168 — and we’re significantly .
However past that, spare us. No person, particularly Canelo Alvarez, is ducking David Benavidez.
He’s fighter with a great deal of potential, however it’s about time he proves it in opposition to one of the best.
