David Benavidez is on the charge in the light heavyweight division, making the first defence of his WBC title against the UK’s Anthony Yarde on Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
He has been around so long, it’s easy to forget the “Mexican Monster” is just 28. Easily one of the most exciting talents in boxing, Benavidez is always out to entertain and makes no secret of the fact he wants to pick up the other three belts at 175 pounds before one day moving up to cruiserweight.
He has also been chasing a fight with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for what seems like an eternity, but isn’t waiting around as he plots his path to the top.
ESPN’s James Regan caught up with him before Saturday’s fight.
Anthony Yarde’s coach, Tunde Ajayi, has said he believes you may be looking past them on Saturday, what did you make of those comments?
“I mean, I’ve never overlooked anybody to be honest with you. If anything, this is the hardest I’ve ever trained for any fight. He could say whatever he wants, but I know at the end of the day when I step in that ring, every opponent … They’ve been getting better than my last opponent.
“So every opponent, I got to give him that respect because once you don’t give an opponent the respect they deserve, that’s when the fights become hard.
“But I have about four months and a half training for this fight just because I’m not in there saying: ‘Oh, this is going to be the hardest fight of my life, this and that.’
“Maybe that’s why they think that I’m overlooking them. But like I said, I’m taking every precaution necessary to make sure I’m 100% ready for this fight. We have a hundreds of rounds of sparring. We have about almost 300 miles ran. Everything has been good.”
You pride yourself on being a “throwback fighter” and always coming for a war. Yarde probably thinks the same about himself. Do you think that makes for an exciting clash?
“Oh yeah, definitely. This is going to be an exciting fight from start to finish. Anthony Yarde, I’ve had my eye on him for a long time, and I think he’s an exceptional talent.
“He has a lot of skills, but these are the types of fighters that excite me. I know it’s going to be a war in there and like I said, I prepared myself extremely well for this fight. I’m 100% ready.”
You always like to entertain in the ring and push the action, going for the knockout if you can. What inside you makes you want to be that type of fighter?
“It’s just the type of fighter I’ve been my whole career. Just the way I’ve learned how to fight when I was a little kid and it’s followed me into the pro game. That’s just the way I like to fight.
“[Fans] don’t want to see two fighters running away from each other. I pride myself on that. If there’s a fighter in there that’s strong, a strong fighter that doesn’t run from nobody that’s actually looking for a fight, that doesn’t scare me.
“If somebody tells me that they’re going to go to war with me, then I want to see them do it. And this is the type of way I’ve been fighting my whole life since I was a little kid. So I don’t know how to fight any other type of way.”
Which fighters did you watch and admire as a kid growing up?
“Manny Pacquiao, Marco Antonio Barrera, Prince Naseem Hamed, Mike Tyson, James Toney, Roberto Duran. A lot of these people I studied when I was younger. And I also remember not only just studying them, but how it made me feel when I watched these fighters fight.
“We would have barbecues at the house and when we’d get these types of fighters, the energy would be through the roof, and everybody would be enjoying what they were seeing.
“Even if it’s a person that doesn’t even know boxing, if you give ’em a fight like that, they’ll forever be your fan.”
You’ve achieved so much already in your career and you’re only 28. What is greatness to you at the moment? And what do you hope your legacy will be when it’s all over?
“Greatness for me is being the type of fighter that doesn’t run away from anybody. Greatness for me is [being] the type of fighter that goes in there and gets his respect from whoever it may be.
“I’ve heard a lot of people saying that there’s some people that I don’t want to fight, but when I get in the ring with them, I’m not running away from anybody. So, this is the type of fighter I want to be in.
“Greatness for me means achieving, winning all the belts in the weight class, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I want to become an undisputed in this weight class. If I would’ve had the opportunity to fight for all the belts, I would’ve been undisputed as super middleweight.
“But that didn’t happen for obvious reasons. So, for me, it’s just winning all the belts in my weight class and going up in weight and just defending my title and being that type of fighter that gets respected by everybody, even the professional fighters.”
Now that you have kids, how does that impact your thinking around what it means to be a role model to them in terms of respect, hard work and the adversity you’ve had to come in your career?
“It definitely means the world to me because not only do I want to talk about that, I also want to show it and I want to show my kids how to do it and not only my kids, just anybody else who’s interested and wants to be this way.
“I think I’m on my way to doing that, but there’s still so much work to be done and we’re going to continue doing everything.
“I’m going to continue to accomplish everything I set out to accomplish. And like I said, just being a positive influence on the youth, on the children and the young fighters of the next generation. I feel like I’ve been doing that really good so far, but I’m going to just keep doing what I’ve been doing.”
You have made it clear you still want to fight Canelo. Does that fight feel closer or further away after the Terence Crawford defeat?
“I don’t know, to be honest with you, I don’t know. Every time I feel like I have something figured out about Canelo or the Canelo fight, things don’t happen how I expect them to happen. But like I said, until Canelo’s retired, that’s always going to be a topic and that’s always going to be a fight that people want to see.
“I just got to keep doing what I’m doing. Even by me doing that, the fight becomes bigger and bigger. It was already big, but me just continuing to fight and racking up championships and then if I do decide to go up to cruiserweight and win those belts, I think this makes the fight even bigger in my opinion.
“I’m ready to fight whenever. I think that’d be a great fight with Canelo and I think it has to happen, but the only person that doesn’t seem like wants to make that fight happen is Canelo. He could say that he’s not scared of nobody, this and that, but the fight makes sense on every category.”
