David Benavidez is calling out Dmitry Bivol for playing it safe, saying that chasing the light heavyweight champion has led to a dead end. With Bivol booking Callum Smith instead, Benavidez is shifting his sights up to cruiserweight ruler Jai Opetaia.
“We’ve been trying to make a fight with Bivol for a long time. It looks like he’s not willing to take any of these big fights,” Benavidez said to InsideRingShow.
Since his rematch against Artur Beterbiev in early 2025, he has stepped through the ropes just once, rolling over unheralded IBF mandatory Michael Eifert in May following back surgery. The medical recovery excuses the downtime, yet Eifert gave him zero resistance.
Eifert looked below average for a world title challenger. He lacked the offense to threaten Bivol or force him out of his preferred style. Bivol took care of his IBF mandatory, but Eifert barely tested him and told us little about how he would fare against another top fighter.
Bivol taking on Callum Smith on December 12 in Yekaterinburg is another move that leaves him open to heavy criticism. Smith’s record is remarkably light on elite victories, and he barely showed up in one-sided losses to Canelo Alvarez and Artur Beterbiev. Holding the WBO mandatory tag explains why the sanctioning body gave him the nod, but taking on Benavidez or finishing the Beterbiev trilogy would have delivered a far more demanding test.
That second fight with Beterbiev took a clear physical toll, and the shift in Bivol’s behavior since then is impossible to miss. When a fighter goes through 24 grueling rounds with a puncher of that caliber, takes that kind of sustained punishment, and then pockets massive paydays, the fire rarely burns the same way.
Back surgery followed shortly after, and fighters returning from spinal procedures with heavy bank accounts rarely look for reasons to sign up for another war. Taking on Michael Eifert and booking Callum Smith back in Russia are classic comfort-zone moves. Those are low-risk appearances designed to satisfy sanctioning bodies and collect checks without having to face genuine firepower.
“I don’t know what’s going on with Bivol and his plans. I have my intentions set on the cruiserweight division. There’s a lot of great fights here,” Benavidez said. “We have this fight on December 5th in Phoenix, Arizona. Then after that, I want the fight with Jai Opetaia on Cinco de Mayo at the T-Mobile Arena.”
Benavidez brings relentless pressure, size, and volume inside, which is the exact kind of taxing physical grind Bivol just spent two fights trying to survive against Beterbiev. Settling the trilogy with Beterbiev carries the very real risk of ending up on the wrong end of another brutal slugfest.
Bivol can point to mandatories all day, but boxing history is full of champions who lost their appetite for danger once they tasted peak wealth and peak physical punishment. Benavidez is simply calling out what is right in front of everyone.