Jose Benavidez Sr, the father and trainer of David Benavidez, has insisted there is only one fighter who would offer his son a considerable challenge.
The 29-year-old became a three-division world champion against Gilberto Ramirez, dethroning his former sparring partner with a sixth-round stoppage at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.
Beforehand, many felt their encounter was likely to go the distance, especially with Benavidez moving up from 175lbs and Ramirez having never previously been dropped.
As it happened, though, Ramirez was forced to suffer two knockdowns – and a nasty swelling on his right eye – before being relieved of his WBO and WBA titles.
Benavidez, meanwhile, is now the unified cruiserweight champion and has the option to move back down to light-heavyweight, where he holds the WBC world title.
In that division, he would likely be targeting an undisputed showdown with Dmitry Bivol, but ‘The Mexican Monster’ could alternatively make an audacious move up to heavyweight.
Benavidez has previously discussed a potential fight in the land of the giants, which his father and coach believes is the only way he will be properly tested.
Speaking with Fight Hub TV, Jose named unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk as perhaps the only man who could present his son with some semblance of a challenge.
“Right now, I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t see any danger for David Benavidez at 175[lbs] and at cruiserweight.
“Nobody can beat David, this is ‘The Monster’ era. At the end of the day, he’s beating everybody in every division, so [he] might as well go to f***ing heavyweight.
“I think the biggest challenge would be Usyk. That’s something like out of this world. That’s the only guy that I think could [challenge him], that would be crazy, that would be another big challenge because he [Usyk] is the pound-for-pound best in my opinion.”
While a clash between Usyk and Benavidez would, indeed, be quite extraordinary, it is difficult to imagine the Ukrainian including Benavidez in his three-fight plan.
