Followers of David Benavidez are apoplectic over the news of Canelo Alvarez defending his four super middleweight titles, Jermall Charlo and Terence Crawford, in 2024 while excluding him from the party on Amazon Prime PPV.
Those are perfectly reasonable choices for Canelo, as they’ll bring in money for him by the truckload and generate oodles of PPV buys on Amazon Prime PPV.
The Harvard-educated Al Haymon of PBC is a genius for choosing Jermall and Crawford for Canelo to fight this year.
As the saying goes, ‘You reap what you sow,’ and Benavidez giving King Canelo (60-2-2, 39 KOs) too much lip has resulted in him being passed over for the opportunity to face him this year and potentially dethrone him.
Fans Cry Foul
The fans of the unbeaten WBC interim 168-lb champion Benavidez (28–0, 24 KOs) had been under the mistaken impression that he would get a chance to fight Canelo in 2024 on either on Cinco de Mayo in May or the Mexican Independence Day holiday in September.
Benavidez’s fans feel he deserves a title shot against Canelo because he’s his WBC mandatory and has been sitting in that position for two years.
As a result, they’re hopping mad about it, and it’s becoming clear to them that the 27-year-old Benavidez will never get a chance to fight Canelo.
That’s a bitter pill for them to swallow because they view Benavidez as the heir apparent, who is expected to replace Canelo on the throne and rule the 168-lb division with an iron fist for the next ten years.
Business vs. Boxing
They don’t realize that the sport is a business, and Canelo is aiming for the proven money-makers Jermall and Crawford.
Benavidez’s recent attempt at PPV against Demetrius Andrade on Showtime last November was a miserable failure, not even breaking 100,000 buys, showing that the casual boxing fans haven’t cottoned to him.
There’s something about Benavidez that the casuals don’t like, and they’re not willing to purchase his fights on PPV now.
If Benavidez’s fans want to be angry with someone, they need to direct their venomous bile at the casuals, who don’t like the Mexican Monster enough to want to purchase his fights on PPV.
What this means for Benavidez is he has two choices:
1. Stick around and wait & hope Canelo will fight him one of these days.
2. Move up to 175 and start over