{"id":895912,"date":"2026-09-18T00:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895912\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T00:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:16:09","slug":"paulie-malignaggi-names-the-fighter-he-would-pick-to-beat-david-benavidez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895912\/","title":{"rendered":"Paulie Malignaggi names the fighter he would pick to beat David Benavidez"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Benavidez<\/a> is aiming to take over boxing over the next 12 months, but two-division world champion Paulie Malignaggi believes there is one fighter he would favour to hand \u2018The Mexican Monster\u2019 his first defeat.<\/p>\n

Benavidez made the 25lb jump up from light-heavyweight to cruiserweight and knocked out unified WBA and WBO world champion Gilberto \u2018Zurdo\u2019 Ramirez<\/a>\u00a0in a performance of the year candidate back in May.<\/p>\n

Now, he looks set to challenge newly-crowned WBC ruler Michal Cieslak in a three-belt unification bout in December, with the victor of that contest mandated to take on cruiserweight poster boy, Jai Opetaia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BoxingScene<\/a>, Malignaggi admitted that Benavidez\u2019s showing against Ramirez enhanced his interest in a possible clash with Opetaia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that this is a very tough fight to call, this is very, very difficult. Benavidez\u2019s performance against Zurdo put me on a different level as far as going from \u2018I don\u2019t know if he can compete with a cruiserweight as big as Opetaia\u2019 to \u2018OK, he can compete with Opetaia\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, winning? I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t take it as a foregone conclusion. I do think that it is now a competitive fight to where I want to see it, whereas before it was like \u2018nah, you are just going to get a really good fighter like Benavidez hurt if you make him fight too heavy, and that is not fair\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malignaggi would lean towards Opetaia if he were to meet the \u2018The Mexican Monster\u2019 in the ring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would probably still edge Opetaia slightly, but it\u2019s not something that would shock me if Benavidez is not only competitive but possibly wins the fight. But, it\u2019s not one of those fights that I look at and say \u2018I am changing my pick and I am picking Benavidez,\u2019. I think that\u2019s way too soon, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benavidez-Cieslak is expected to take place on Saturday, December 12, in Phoenix, Arizona, where a victory for the 29-year-old could tee up a 2027 Cinco De Mayo meeting with Australia\u2019s Opetaia.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Benavidez is aiming to take over boxing over the next 12 months, but two-division world champion Paulie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-895912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}