Super middleweights Benavidez, Lemieux sign for spring showdown on Showtime

With undisputed champ Canelo exploring cruiserweight title fight, winner will claim the interim WBC belt

David Benavidez

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Big punchers David Benavidez and David Lemieux have signed to meet in an attractive fight for the WBC interim super middleweight title this spring in a Showtime main event, Sampson Lewkowicz, Benavidez’s promoter, told Fight Freaks Unite on Thursday afternoon.

“The fight is signed and now we will sit down with Showtime and work out the date but it will be in either April or May,” Lewkowicz said.

The fight had been signed on Wednesday but kept quiet until the WBC announced on Thursday that it has granted permission to former two-time super middleweight titlist Benavidez (25-0, 22 KOs), 24, of Phoenix, and former middleweight titlist David Lemieux (43-4, 36 KOs), 32, of Montreal, to meet for the organization’s interim 168-pound title. They are No. 1 and 2 in the WBC’s super middleweight rankings.

The move was expected after the WBC at its recent convention granted undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez permission to challenge for the organization’s cruiserweight world title in his next fight, prompting Lewkowicz to seek approval for Benavidez to fight for the interim title.

If Alvarez (57-1-2, 39 KOs) follows through with a two-division move up to cruiserweight to shoot for a world title in a fifth weight division, he would do so against the winner of the fight between titleholder Ilunga Makabu (28-2, 25 KOs), of Congo, and South African mandatory challenger Thabiso Mchunu (23-5, 13 KOs).

They are supposed to meet in a rematch on January 29 at Packard Music Hall in Warren, Ohio, on a Don King-promoted card.

“Everything was very smooth and professional in making this deal with Camille Estephan,” Lewkowicz said of Lemieux’s promoter from Eye of the Tiger Management. “Everyone signed in less than one hour. That’s unheard of. David will fight anyone. I bring a great fight to Showtime.”

Lewkowicz said the site of the fight has not been determined but that it will take place in the United States with Lemieux’s home turf in Quebec not an option.

“We signed to fight in America,” Lewkowicz said. “I must say their side, Camille, his lawyer, Anthony Rudman, was super professional. It was so smooth. You know in boxing it is not always like that. But we all wanted this fight and we make this fight quickly.”

The winner of the bout would be a potential opponent for Alvarez should he return to the 168-pound division, as most expect he will regardless of what may happen in a possible cruiserweight bout.

Benavidez has twice been stripped of the WBC title, once for a positive cocaine test in 2018 and once for failing to make weight for a 2020 title defense. Despite his issues, he remains one of the best and most entertaining fighters in the division.

He was supposed to face former titlist Jose Uzcategui in a WBC title eliminator on Nov. 13 in Phoenix, but when Uzcategui tested positive for a banned substance he was dropped from the fight. Kyrone Davis accepted the fight, which was downgraded to a 10-rounder, on short notice and Benavidez stopped him in the seventh round.

Lemieux has won five fights in a row, including his three fights since moving up to super middleweight, since a one-sided decision loss challenging then-middleweight titlist Billy Joe Saunders in December 2017 in Laval, Quebec, just outside of Montreal. But Lemieux has been inactive, fighting just once each in 2019, 2020 and 2021, and has not faced a serious opponent since the loss to Saunders.

Lemieux won a middleweight title in June 2015 and lost it four months later in his first defense to Gennadiy Golovkin by seventh-round knockout in a unification fight,

Photo: Ryan Hafey/PBC

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