5 Best Fights for David Benavidez After Win vs. Caleb Plant | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

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It’s a big stretch for the super middleweights.

Just more than a week after pay-per-view stalwart—and undisputed 168-pound champion—Canelo Álvarez announced he’d be returning to the ring in early May, two fighters hoping to be next on his dance card this summer met atop their own PPV show in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Top contenders David Benavidez and Caleb Plant, who’ve combined for eight title-fight wins across three belted reigns in the weight class, were at the MGM Grand as the main eventers in a card carried live from the desert by Showtime and PPV.com.

Benavidez emerged victorious by punishing decision and put himself at the front of the line for a date with the Mexican superstar, but the B/R combat sports team surveyed the entire competitive landscape available to the unbeaten 26-year-old just in case things don’t come together.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a take or two of your own in the comments.

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Let’s start with the most desirable option, shall we?

Given his 26-0 record and two reigns as the WBC’s champion, not to mention his newly certified status as the organization’s mandatory challenger to full-fledged claimant, it’s no surprise that Canelo Álvarez has been on Benavidez’s wish list.

He pulled no punches in a recent chat with Everything Boxing, suggesting that Álvarez, who’s been the WBC champ since 2020, needs to go ahead and sign for a fight with him or relinquish the throne if he’s decided against the matchup.

Incidentally, for tales of the tape purposes, Benavidez stands 6’2″ to Álvarez’s 5’8″ and has a 74.5-inch reach compared to Álvarez’s 70.5. Álvarez is 7-0 with four KOs from 160 to 168 pounds, including an 11th-round KO of Plant in November 2021.

“Now, this fight [with Plant], the winner is the mandatory for Canelo. That’s what it has to be. If he doesn’t want to fight me, then he has to vacate the belt,” he said. “I feel it’ll be a big opportunity to miss because the fans want to see this fight. It’s a big fight, and may the best man win.”

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It wouldn’t be entirely off base to call David Morrell a prodigy.

He still just 25 years old and has only eight professional fights after an extensive amateur career in which he fought 132 times and won a youth world championship representing Cuba in 2016. But even in a limited time, he’s picked up some street cred.

He turned pro with a first-round KO in Minneapolis in 2019 and had only four wins under his belt before picking up the WBA’s admittedly dubious second-tier “world” title—Álvarez holds the full-fledged crown—with another first-round stoppage in 2021.

Three more fights have yielded three more KOs across three more “title defenses” lasting a combined 20 rounds, lifting Morrell’s still fledgling record to 8-0 with 7 KOs.

The Ring has him fourth among Álvarez’s ranked contenders—trailing Benavidez, Plant and imminent May opponent John Ryder—and the 6’1″ southpaw with a 78.5-inch reach is already well-rehearsed in proclaiming his elite status.

“I still have many things to conquer in the division,” he told BoxingScene in 2021. “The truth is that I am the best, but not legally because I do not have all the titles. At the moment I am among the four [champions], from there to [No.] 1 there is little left.”

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If you’re looking for heat, look at Jermall Charlo.

He and Benavidez have had one another’s names in their mouths for quite a while now, and they took the first step toward physicality last April when they and their entourages had a dust-up while sitting ringside for the Errol Spence Jr.-Yordenis Ugás welterweight fight.

Charlo is the WBC’s champion of record eight pounds down the ladder at middleweight, but he’s expressed frustration with an inability to land big fights at 160 and suggested a move to 168 could provide a shot at boost relevance thanks to the presence of Álvarez and others.

Benavidez, of course, being one of the others. Though a skeptical one at best.

“He wants that big payday,” Benavidez told BoxingScene. “But you have to take a big risk to get that big reward, fighting the face of boxing. I feel like the biggest fight for him besides Canelo is me. And vice versa. All of our stock goes up.”

Charlo, at least verbally, seems up for the challenge.

“[Benavidez] get nervous every time he see me,” he told Fight Hub TV. “He mentions me a lot, so when he finally see me, I get right back on his ass. This is what we do from Texas. This is how we are. This is my mentality.”

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Speaking of fighters on the move, here’s Demetrius Andrade.

Now 35, the former U.S. Olympian had spent his entire pro career at 154 and 160 pounds, winning world titles at both weights, before climbing another rung in January to score a 10-round scorecard shutout in his debut as a super middleweight.

He’d never been able to secure and score a truly career-defining victory at either weight class—beating just two independently ranked top-10 foes along the way—so his climb to 168, too, is being motivated by a pursuit of the likes of Alvarez and/or others.

Among them, Benavidez. Though he predicted going into Saturday that Plant would win.

“Yes,” Andrade told BoxingScene, “David Benavidez can fight. But is he the best? Is he the most skillful fighter? No.”

And like some of the others, Benavidez seems down with it, too.

If nothing else arises, that is.

“If I can’t get any other fights,” he told BoxingScene. “He’s expressed that he would like to fight me. I expressed that I would like to fight him. Why not make it happen?”

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Clearly, Benavidez has got plans and wishes for his career.

He’s got a lot of things to accomplish at 168 pounds but precisely no guarantee that all or any of the fights that he’s seeking will actually come off as hoped.

So why not do what nearly all of his would-be opponents have already done and move up himself to seek bigger opportunities?

Meaning, in this case, either Dmitry Bivol or Artur Beterbiev.

The former is the WBA’s champion at 175 pounds and vaulted himself into the pound-for-pound stratosphere last spring with a surprise unanimous-decision defeat of Álvarez. He’s fought once since and outpointed another ex-champ at 168, Gilberto Ramírez.

The latter is the IBF/WBC/WBO kingpin at light heavyweight who’s also undefeated and most recently added to a run of 19 straight KOs with an eighth-round finish of Anthony Yarde.

Benavidez is a plenty confident guy anyway, but he’s even more confident in this case because of a past sparring history with Bivol and advantages in both height and reach over both he and Beterbiev.

“I sparred Bivol a lot,” Benavidez said in a pre-Plant media gathering, “so I know what happened during those sparring sessions. Yeah, I can beat him. I can knock him out.

“I feel like I could have a lot of success with [Beterbiev], and I would love to fight him in the future. He leaves his body open a lot. You can really hit him with a lot of combinations. It would be an extremely tough task. I would want to go up to 175 and see how it is first before I go to the main guy. But I think at 175, I’m going to be even more stronger and faster.”