David Benavidez may be scheduled for a cruiserweight title fight on May 2 when he takes on titleholder Gilberto \u2018Zurdo\u2019 Ramirez, but he still has his future set on returning to the light heavyweight division as he continues to seek out fights against Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev. Benavidez would explain that he was unable to immediately land a fight against Bivol, who wants to have a tune up fight first, so he instead thought this would be a good opportunity to snag another world title in the meanwhile to bolster his credentials. Check out some of what he had to say to Ring Magazine below.<\/p>\n
Benavidez on fighting Zurdo at cruiserweight<\/p>\n
\u201cMy main focus is to make history, become one of the greatest of all time and also put the biggest fights available. I\u2019m coming back to light heavyweight, you know, I don\u2019t want anybody to get it wrong that I\u2019m staying at cruiserweight. Obviously if good opportunities present itself then we\u2019ll stay here a little bit longer but I thought just because \u2014 Dmitry Bivol, he\u2019s going to do a tune up fight \u2014 and for me just waiting around and defending my title and getting a regular fight, I thought it would be a good idea to go up and challenge Zurdo Ramirez for his two titles.\u201d<\/p>\n
On if he\u2019d consider moving up again for heavyweight glory<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear a lot of people talking about heavyweight but these are big guys, this is an extremely different type of power. So I\u2019m not thinking about heavyweight anytime soon. If I think about heavyweight it\u2019s like probably five, six years. But what I really wanted to do is become unified champion at 175 and become a dominant champion at 175. I\u2019ve been telling you guys I want to get Dmitry Bivol and then Artur Beterbiev, and I know those are two fights that all the world of boxing wants to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
On how he doesn\u2019t fall into the same trap that Roy Jones Jr did in moving up to heavyweight and then coming back down only to see his body not responding the same<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good thing about my fights is I only fight twice a year. So if I give a camp seven months to get ready, that\u2019s more than enough time. I think what happened with Roy Jones Jr and Tarver is I think he said he tried to lose the weight too fast. But I don\u2019t care, man. We\u2019ll find a way. Where there\u2019s a will there\u2019s a way and I have my dreams and aspirations of what we\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the confidence he has from his sparring experience<\/p>\n
\u201cI sparred a lot of people. To be honest with you, I\u2019ve gotten the best of every fighter I\u2019ve sparred whether it\u2019s Bivol, whether it\u2019s Golovkin, whether it\u2019s Zurdo, whether it\u2019s Kelly Pavlik, all these guys. That\u2019s why I am who I am. That\u2019s why I don\u2019t like poeple sayig that \u2018sparring sessions are sparring sessions.\u2019 Our sparring sessions are not sparring sessions, they\u2019re real fights. So if I can touch you in that sparring session I know for sure I can touch you in the real fight. So I\u2019m just ready for whatever comes my way. This is the era of the Mexican Monster and I\u2019m ready to showcase my skills to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Benavidez may be scheduled for a cruiserweight title fight on May 2 when he takes on titleholder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6102,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-483745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}