{"id":821186,"date":"2026-11-01T23:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T23:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/821186\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T23:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T23:16:12","slug":"roy-jones-jr-assesses-david-benavidezs-chances-at-heavyweight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/821186\/","title":{"rendered":"Roy Jones Jr assesses David Benavidez’s chances at heavyweight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roy Jones Jr<\/a> is the only fighter in boxing history to have been a super-middleweight and heavyweight world champion, but David Benavidez<\/a> is eyeing up the opportunity to do the same. Now, Jones has offered his thoughts on whether \u2018The Mexican Monster\u2019 could emulate his achievement.<\/p>\n

Jones outpointed John Ruiz to capture the WBA heavyweight title in 2003<\/a>, a decade after his decision win against Bernard Hopkins for the IBF middleweight world title and eight-and-a-half years after he trumped James Toney for the IBF super-middleweight marble.<\/p>\n

Whilst Toney also defeated Ruiz for the heavyweight crown in 2005 to join Jones in as a second 168lb and heavyweight ruler, his triumph was later ruled as a no-contest due to a failed drugs test.<\/p>\n

Benavidez has now made his way from super-middleweight to cruiserweight and is homing in on a shot at the undisputed 200lb title, before a potential move into heavyweight scene, where he believes he will ultimately remain.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Hall of Game podcast<\/a>, Jones declared that Benavidez\u2019s mooted showdown with Jai Opetaia will prove whether he is capable of making the move up to heavyweight, due to the Aussie\u2019s punching power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that I say, \u2018let\u2019s hold up with that one\u2019 is because, if he is about to fight Opetaia, that is going to be a very tough fight for David. So I want to see how David fares in that fight first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that he probably wins the fight, but I want to see how he fares in that fight because the one thing that Daniel Dubois has is punching power.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe [Dubois] will go down, but he can put you down too. So let\u2019s see how David deals with this punching power from Opetaia first, if he deals with that well, then that would be a great fight to see because I\u2019d like to see if he can take Dubois\u2019 punch and can Dubois take his punch?<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, that would be a great fight to see, once he passes the test in front of him right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, Benavidez is set to collide with reigning WBC champion Michael Cieslak<\/a> in a bid to add a third cruiserweight world title to his collection, on Saturday, December 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roy Jones Jr is the only fighter in boxing history to have been a super-middleweight and heavyweight world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821186","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\/821186","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=821186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}