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David Benavidez wasn’t surprised by the result, other than wondering if at least one judge would try to steal it from Dmitry Bivol.
The unbeaten, former two-time WBC super middleweight titlist joined an intimate fight party from his training headquarters in San Diego to watch Bivol take a well-deserved, unanimous decision over Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez to defend his WBA light heavyweight title. Benavidez was an interested observer, as the mandatory challenger to his old WBC super middleweight belt currently held by Alvarez.
Judges Tim Cheatham, Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld all scored the contest 115-113 in favor of Bivol in their DAZN Pay-Per-View event Saturday evening from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Alvarez remains the undisputed super middleweight champion as he fought one division heavier in a bid to become a two-time light heavyweight titlist. It surprisingly came close to happening, despite most observers believing Bivol deserved to win with room to spare.
“Congrats to Bivol, Canelo had the wrong game plan from the beginning,” Benavidez said while serving as part of a live viewing party hosted on Tha Boxing Voice YouTube channel. “He just came in throwing those big hooks. That shit don’t work on everybody.
“This guy [Bivol], he wasn’t gonna lose. He got hit with some good shots but he put it all on the line.”
Unofficial punch stats as reported by Compubox had Bivol (20-0, 10KOs)—a Kyrgyzstan-born boxer who was raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia—outlanding Guadalajara’s Alvarez (57-2-2, 39KOs) in every round, and holding the pound-for-pound king to single-digit connects in ten of the twelve rounds. Bivol landed 152-of-710 total punches (21%), while holding Alvarez to just 84-of-495 (17%), a career-low in landed punches for Alvarez in a 12-round fight.
The loss was the first for Alvarez since dropping a twelve-round, majority decision to Floyd Mayweather in September 2013—a fight that wasn’t nearly as close as should have been on the scorecards, much like his defeat to Bivol.
Alvarez entered the Mayweather fight as the unified WBC/WBA junior middleweight titlist, having since claimed titles at middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight along with a brief second reign at junior middleweight.
A sixteen-fight unbeaten streak comes to an end for Alvarez, who chose to fight Bivol as part of a renewed three-fight deal with Matchroom Boxing to appear on DAZN’s foray into the PPV market. The other option on the table was a potential two-fight deal with Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), with whom he joined forces for a one-off in his eleventh-round knockout of Caleb Plant to become the first-ever undisputed super middleweight champion last November.
Alvarez was offered fights with WBC middleweight titlist Jermall Charlo—who would have moved up in weight—and Benavidez as part of PBC’s two-fight plan, but instead chose to pursue another light heavyweight title run. The dare to be great and add to his legacy didn’t pan out, though his divisional rivals should caution against reading too much into the result.
“He just got beat by the better man,” Benavidez stated. “I don’t think he’s fuckin’ trash or anything. He just got beat by the better man. There are still some big fights for him.”
Phoenix’s Benavidez is finishing training camp for an upcoming clash with Montreal’s David Lemieux (43-4, 36KOs), with the interim WBC super middleweight title at stake in their May 21 Showtime headliner from Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona. The winner will look to enforce their mandatory status in a title fight with Alvarez, whether later this year or in the first part of 2023.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
