Rarely would questions of age be asked of a 27-year-old fighter seemingly in his prime. However, in Boxing, age is a much more complicated formula than simply the number by itself. Factors such as mileage, physiology, mental fortitude, competitive spirit, career-span, ego, defensive skills, training habits, lifestyle, and even finances can play a major role in a fighter’s shelf-life.
First, let’s take a look at the positive factors in favor of the Phoenix, AZ native. Benavidez had a very short amateur career, going undefeated in 15 fights before turning pro at age 16. In his 11 years as a pro, he has taken very little punishment due to careful matchmaking against mostly under-sized and always inexperienced opponents. His head is also large, and his facial features show evidence of a thick skull.
Many thick-skulled fighters have enjoyed long careers absorbing punishment with very little effect in the ring or later in life. Mike Tyson and Julio Cesar Chavez are prime examples of this. David has also shown great training discipline while in the gym, often shedding dozens of pounds in the final weeks of camp. A limited level of competition considered, David has still displayed a warrior’s spirit inside the ring.
The Weighting Game
Unfortunately, Benavidez has multiple negative factors that could point to an abbreviated career that seems to just be getting started to casual-level fans. To begin with, David has a weight issue. At just over 6’0 tall, David has been known to weigh as much as 250 pounds. At 16 years old, not even fully developed, he was fighting as a professional Cruiserweight (200).
David has been able to turn this negative into a temporary positive so far by using extreme training and diet measures to squeeze all the way down to the Super Middleweight (168) division for the weigh-in, then hydrating back to Cruiserweight in time for the ring walk. This short-sighted method of gaining an advantage carries a huge deficit on the back end. This is not only one of the most career-shortening techniques used by predatory fighters in recent times, but it is also the most dangerous to both combatants in the ring.
For casual-level fans who don’t understand Boxing and view this as a chess move within the rules of the sport, there is a failure to realize that this is nothing short of an exploitation of a rule put into place to prevent the likelihood of ring tragedies. Weigh-ins were once held on the day of the fight, which prevents fighters who struggle to make weight from rehydrating properly before receiving blows to the head later that evening.
This creates an extremely dangerous situation where the protective cerebrospinal fluids surrounding the brain and spinal cord are depleted due to extreme dehydration. This is the reason that most Boxing tragedies occur outside of the Heavyweight division, where there is no need to dehydrate one’s self to meet a contracted weight limit.
To subvert this potentially lethal danger, Weigh-ins were moved to the day before, sometimes even two days before, in order to protect not only the combatants but the sport itself, which has long suffered scrutiny for its barbarism and tragic history. David is not the first, although definitely one of the more extreme cases, of fighters who have turned this safety measure into an opportunity to exploit their opponents and create an entirely new dangerous situation where one combatant enjoys a twenty to thirty-pound size advantage over their opponent inside the ring.
One only has to look at once-beaten Devin Haney, the most extreme safety-measure-exploiter in modern Boxing, to see how quickly your career can be completely derailed once your body has had too much of this predatory practice and you are forced to face an opponent of near-equal size.
The Canelo Situation
Benavidez has already shown multiple signs that his body can no longer take the abuse of these extreme weight fluctuations. David made a name for himself solely by attaching himself to the career of Canelo Alvarez. So effective has this marketing ploy been that one can rarely hear one name mentioned without the other name following soon after.
Curiously, many casual-level fans and agenda-pushing pundits have failed to realize that David Benavidez has already had three opportunities to face Canelo Alvarez, having blown all three of them either foolishly or, as most believe, intentionally.
In July 2018, while on the promotional tour for his rematch against Gennady Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez proclaimed his intention to make the move to the Super Middleweight (168) division should he defeat Golovkin. Canelo, being a Mexican national where the WBC belt is held in the highest regard of all titles, would first seek the WBC belt held by David Benavidez.
Less than a month later, on August 27th, 2018, VADA collected a scheduled urine sample from Benavidez. On September 18th, 2018, the day before Canelo vs Golovkin, Benavidez’s August urinalysis results revealed a positive hit for cocaine. David was stripped of the title and suspended, robbing Canelo of the opportunity to vie for the coveted WBC Super Middleweight (168) title.
Rather than fighting for the newly vacated belt, which the WBC was practically throwing at him due to his high earnings that convert into disproportionately high sanctioning fees, Canelo instead challenged WBA Champion Rocky Fielding while the beltless Benavidez served out his suspension. Rather than collecting the WBC belt in an unsavory way, Canelo, in turn, collected more belts at 160 and even 175 while allowing Benavidez to get his career back on track, ultimately regaining the WBC 168 title one year later in September of 2019.
The stage was set once again for Canelo vs Benavidez for the WBC, WBA Regular, and Ring Super Middleweight (168) Championship of the World on Cinco De Mayo weekend in 2021. David would take a tune-up fight in August 2020 to prepare for his career-defining shot at immortality and Canelo would challenge 6’3 undefeated World Champion Callum Smith in December 2020 to prepare himself for the size of Benavidez. However, with his supposed dream fight on the table, David inexplicably tipped the scales at over 170 pounds for the weigh-in of his defense against Angulo and was immediately stripped of the WBC title.
Canelo, now having given Benavidez two opportunities while waiting for two years, was forced to move on with career and the WBC belt was rightfully added to the pot in the battle for the Lineal Super Middleweight Championship against undefeated World Champion Callum Smith.
For the next three years, Benavidez would hound Canelo and the media for a shot at Alvarez’s now undisputed Super Middleweight (168) Championship. Canelo, finding it increasingly difficult to take Benavidez seriously due to his forfeiture of two previous opportunities to land the fight, refused to entertain the match due to the unreliability of Benavidez as a professional and questionable valor. However, in early 2024, the WBC publicly announced that they would be enforcing a mandatory defense of Canelo’s WBC championship against David Benavidez.
Rather than vacating, Canelo accepted the ruling and empowered his team to send an offer to Benavidez. David accepted the offer, and once again, the fight was on. However, before detailed negotiations could commence, David shockingly announced that he would be leaving the 168-pound division and challenging Oleksandr Gvozdyk for the WBC Light Heavyweight (175) interim replica belt.
This move shocked the Boxing community, Boxing Pundits, The WBC, Team Canelo, and left jaws agape across the sport and beyond. For months afterward, Benavidez hemmed and hawed about returning to face Canelo at Super Middleweight (168), changing his mind almost daily until serious interest in the match-up dwindled and the match became impossible from a promotional standpoint.
David Benavidez intentionally forfeited three opportunities to face Canelo after grandstanding and building his entire career on being the final challenge of Canelo’s Hall of Fame career, which can only mean one of two things. David either never truly intended to face Canelo and just wanted to ride the coattails of the universally recognized Face of Boxing, or he is simply no longer able to make the 168-pound weigh-in and remain competitive.
Have the miles, partying, and weight-draining prematurely taken their toll on David’s body and psyche? Training videos have shown David to be weighing somewhere between 210 and 230 pounds, essentially converting his training camps into fat camps where the focus is losing weight rather than gaining strength, technique, and skill.
The Last Stand
Benavidez is now set to face David Morrell, a big, young, strong, and talented yet inexperienced 11-fight prospect at Light Heavyweight (175). Morrell is known for collecting third-place replicas of belts held by the Undisputed Champions of the Super Middleweight (168) and Light Heavyweight (175) divisions.
Benavidez, not a big puncher at Super Middleweight (168), carries below-average strength and power at Light Heavyweight (175). In fact, one could argue that he has only ever fought two fighters of equal size in his professional career. The first was 6’2 Ronald Gavril.
Most experts agree that Benavidez was thoroughly beaten in their first encounter, with one judge scoring the fight for Gavril by a dominating 116-111 score and given a huge gift by technically retaining his unbeaten record. To his credit, David righted this wrong by immediately re-matching Gavril and rightfully winning the fight, albeit unspectacularly.
The second is his most recent opponent, Gvozdyk. David did earn the decision but looked soft, slow, and weak compared to his earlier performances against woefully disadvantaged opponents. Unfortunately for Benavidez, his career has come to a point of dead ends in almost every direction. He can clearly no longer compete against smaller fighters without forfeiting the advantages he once had by facing smaller fighters, yet he does not carry the strength and power to compete with the top echelon at Light Heavyweight (175).
Should he be successful against Morrell, which is far from a guarantee, Undisputed champion Artur Beterbiev would likely break down and dispose of Benavidez in 3 or 4 rounds. Potentially injuring him permanently. Once-beaten Dmitri Bivol would probably be worse for David because Bivol is a punishing fighter who lacks one-punch KO power but is a strong, high-volume puncher who can dangerously prolong a vicious beating on a physically compromised fighter like David Benavidez.
David truly only has one path left to secure financial security for the rest of his life: boxing immortality. That path, on top of defeating David Morrell, requires Canelo Alvarez to challenge and defeat Artur Beterbiev, then trust Benavidez’s mettle and professionalism by offering him a fourth opportunity to fight, Benavidez accepting the fight, then out-boxing Canelo and immediately retiring as the Undisputed Light Heavyweight Champion of the World.
It’s not a very likely scenario considering the ambiguity of all of these scenarios and their respective outcomes, but it’s clearly the path David is banking on in his attempt at collecting replicas of Beterbiev’s belts and the accompanying mandatory challenger positions while at the same time declining multiple offers to actually face Artur Beterbiev in the ring.
Any other scenario than this will absolutely result in David Benavidez’s first loss occurring in 2025, accompanied by the inevitable downward spiral that history has proven to follow time and time again with countless Boxing talents who have come and gone in a flash throughout the annals of the Loneliest Sport.
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