{"id":744371,"date":"2026-06-18T06:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744371\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T06:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:14:11","slug":"david-benavidez-likely-to-face-noel-mikaelian-in-next-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744371\/","title":{"rendered":"David Benavidez likely to face Noel Mikaelian in next fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">David Benavidez is reportedly in \u201cadvanced\u201d discussions to face Noel Mikaelian in a cruiserweight unification in his next fight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Benavidez (32-0, 26 KO) moved up to cruiserweight in early May, thrashing Zurdo Ramirez to take the WBA and WBO titles and becoming a three-division world champion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The 35-year-old Mikaelian (28-3, 12 KO) regained the WBC belt from Badou Jack in a December rematch. He is a good fighter, and obviously ordering unifications is better than a lot of what gets ordered, but very few will see him having a real chance to upset Benavidez.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The report says that Sampson Lewkowciz, part of Benavidez\u2019s team, had a long talk with Mikaelian\u2019s promoter, Don King, which is a reminder to not get too far ahead here, either, because King can be tricky to negotiate with in the last 15 years or so especially. Still, with the WBC behind the idea, that makes it seem likely to happen, at least for now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Is Benavidez vs Mikaelian good for you? Does the unification make it worthwhile, especially if Benavidez simply can\u2019t get anything bigger?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Benavidez is reportedly in \u201cadvanced\u201d discussions to face Noel Mikaelian in a cruiserweight unification in his next&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-744371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}