David Benavidez denies that he agreed to a fight with WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion David Morrell Jr. He says that’s fake news, despite it coming from quotes from his own promoter Sampson Lewkowicz.
Benavidez (27-0, 23 KOs) says he’s not interested in fighting Morrell (9-0, 8 KOs), even though it would give him a chance to become world champion at 168.
Instead, Benavidez wants to fight non-belt holder Jaime Munguia, who recently moved up to super middleweight and won a razor-close decision over Sergiy Derevyanchenko on June 10th.
Fans on social media believe that Benavidez is afraid of Morrell, worried that the Cuban could upend his career before he gets the Canelo Alvarez fight, which doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to happen.
Golden Boy was throwing out names and Benavidez was one of them when they looking at future opponents for Munguia, but that doesn’t mean the fight will happen. They would prefer to get Gennadiy Golovkin for Munguia because that would be a massive one, and a more winnable fight for the 26-year-old.
“There’s no fight when we’re all lined up. I just seen that yesterday that supposedly they said I agreed to the fight,” said David Benavidez to Fighthype about him denying the news that his own promoter Sampson Lewkowicz reported that he’d agreed to a fight with WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion David Morrell Jr for October or November.
“I’m like, ‘man, I bet this is my first time seeing about it.’ We’re not fighting Morrell. Everything has been coming out that saying that we agreed to the fight. I haven’t even seen anything. I didn’t agree to anything. I’m trying to make the big fights happen right now.
“We’re trying to look. We want to fight Jaime Munguia. He came up to 168. I think that would be a great fight. Two big names, but if we can’t get him, we’ll probably do Morrell.
“There’s a lot of fake news out there. If it doesn’t come from me, it’s not official.
“I don’t like to say they’re scared, but they didn’t even reply to the offer,” said Benavidez about Canelo Alvarez not replying to the offer from his promoter Sampson Lewkowicz about a fight.
“It’s one thing that you can tell him that they’re going to turn it down and wait one more year to try and get some more money, but they didn’t even reply to it.
“So imagine you got a deal on the table for 45 million dollars and nobody replies. Like, I don’t know what else to say. He [Canelo] doesn’t want to fight me. He’d rather negotiate with somebody that hasn’t fought in three years.
“No disrespect to Charlo but he still hasn’t fought in three years. He’s going to have ring rust. It’s still a long time,” said Benavidez.