Notebook: Ignored by Canelo, Benavidez faces dangerous Morrell
Cacace vacates; Boxing Social appearance; Shields faces Perkins for more titles; Golden Boy signing binge; Quick hits; Show and tell
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LAS VEGAS — No Canelo, no problem.
David Benavidez has spent the past couple of years chasing a fight with Canelo Alvarez, the Mexican superstar and unified super middleweight champion. But even as the WBC mandatory challenger and the fight being heavily demanded by legions of boxing fans, Benavidez was denied the fight by Alvarez.
Instead, over the past two years, Alvarez faced John Ryder, then-undisputed junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo, Jaime Munguia and Edgar Berlanga.
Benavidez understood he couldn’t make Alvarez fight him and, resigned to that fact, moved up to light heavyweight in June and outpointed former champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk for the vacant WBC interim light heavyweight title.
While Benavidez still hopes Alvarez will eventually face him, he is not waiting around nor looking to protect his record. Instead he has been fighting the biggest non-Canelo fights available.
He will do it again in what is widely viewed as the toughest fight of his career when Benavidez squares off with WBA “regular” light heavyweight titlist David Morrell in the main event of the PBC on Prime PPV on Saturday (Prime Video PPV, PPV.COM, 8 p.m. ET, $79.99) at T-Mobile Arena.
A win over Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs), 27, a Cuban southpaw fighting out of Minneapolis, will position Benavidez for the serious possibility of then moving on to fight the winner of the rematch between undisputed champion Artur Beterbiev and former titlist Dmitry Bivol, who meet again on Feb. 22 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“I think now it’s really apparent that Canelo does whatever he wants to do and he plays by his own rules,” Benavidez told Fight Freaks Unite. “He’s a great champion. I take nothing away from him. But, you know, he’s been fighting smaller guys from smaller weight classes and been making them come up. I guess if that’s what he wants to do and that’s in their plans, they can do whatever they want.
