{"id":642286,"date":"2026-06-16T20:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/642286\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T20:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:52:07","slug":"david-benavidez-offered-fight-against-former-champion-with-75-ko-ratio-im-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/642286\/","title":{"rendered":"David Benavidez offered fight against former champion with 75% KO ratio: “I’m waiting”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having captured the unified cruiserweight world titles, David Benavidez<\/a> is seeking another opponent that could further improve his growing reputation. However, one of his divisional rivals is claiming that \u2018The Mexican Monster\u2019 is holding up their potential fight.<\/p>\n

Benavidez dominated and stopped Gilberto \u2018Zurdo\u2019 Ramirez in his cruiserweight debut last month<\/a>, capturing the unified WBA and WBO titles with a round six knockout that is being labelled as a performance of the year candidate.<\/p>\n

Since then, Benavidez\u2019s planned return to light-heavyweight, and fight with Dmitry Bivol<\/a>, has become less likely, with such an impressive display at 200lbs appearing to encourage Benavidez to remain at his new weight.<\/p>\n

In that new division, Jai Opetaia<\/a> seems to be the name that fans are keen for him to face, despite him recently being stripped of the IBF world title<\/a>, but the Aussie knockout artist has shared his confusion at the apparent inability to make the fight, in a clip captured by MMA Crazy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, I would love that fight. I have been chasing these unifications for such a long time now, so to get one over the line would be awesome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am just waiting, that fight is easy to make on our side, so I don\u2019t know what the hold up is on theirs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whilst Benavidez-Opetaia is deemed to be the most intriguing clash at cruiserweight, it seems as though Benavidez will next take on WBC world champion, Noel Mikaelian.<\/p>\n

The Armenian was ordered to face the Arizona-born pound-for-pound star earlier this month<\/a>, in a first and mandatory defence of his title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having captured the unified cruiserweight world titles, David Benavidez is seeking another opponent that could further improve his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-642286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642286","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=642286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}