The young star gets back in the ring on March 16th.
It will have been about 13 months since his last fight when disgraced former titleholder David Benavidez (20-0, 17 KOs) returns to the ring as part of the March FOX PPV headlined by Errol Spence Jr and Mikey Garcia. It was a helluva a drug that did the still so young 22 year old in back in August when he popped for cocaine on a random VADA test. Not only did that error in judgement cost the rising young star valuable time in the ring, but it also cost him his WBC title.
Benavidez is in line to fight the winner of the vacant title fight between Anthony Dirrell and Avni Yildirim on February 23rd, but apparently he and his team are not interested in waiting for that opportunity. Instead they will be taking a slot on the FOX PPV. To me this screams a traditional tune up and understandably so, but promoter Sampson Lewkowicz is arguing that David doesn’t need one and is looking to fight a “top contender.” I’ll believe it when it is booked.
The 22 year old could definitely use a win no matter who it is against though. Not only did his cocaine issues set his career back, but before that even he had signed with Top Rank and accepted a $250,000 signing bonus only later to have it be revealed that he was still under a binding contract with Lewkowicz. Benavidez had to pay back the signing bonus and missed out on a possible defense thanks to this situation before he even failed a drug test. He had a rough 2018.
Here’s to a better 2019 for David Benavidez, for his own sake and so we can all see the young talent consistently back in the ring.
