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David Benavidez continues to fan the flames for a renewed rivalry with Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant.
There was never any love lost between the two during their overlapping super middleweight title reigns, though it unfortunately never materialized into a unification bout. Interestingly, such a fight is suddenly in play as previously revealed by Jose Benavidez Sr., David’s father and trainer who has suggested that talks were in place for the two to meet in September.
Benavidez (25-0, 22KOs) still has to take care of his current task. The former two-time WBC super middleweight titlist is due to face former IBF middleweight titlist David Lemieux atop a May 21 Showtime event from Footprint Center in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. The winner will claim the interim WBC super middleweight title, though without the guarantee of next facing undisputed WBC/WBA/IBF/WBO champion Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez (57-1-2, 39KOs).
With that in mind, Benavidez—the leading super middleweight right behind Alvarez—has chosen to map out the rest of the year.
“Mr sweet cheeks himself loves to get humbled,” Benavidez said in a not-so-playful swipe in a recent Instagram post, complete with photos of Plant falling to the canvas in his knockout loss to Alvarez. “I think he likes the way that [c]anvas taste. He gonna see it again real soon.”
Plant (21-1, 12KOs)—a former IBF super middleweight titlist—has not fought since an eleventh-round knockout defeat to Alvarez in their historic undisputed super middleweight championship last November 6 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Benavidez will fight for the second straight time at Footprint Center. The 25-year-old former champ is coming off a seventh-round knockout of Kyrone Davis last November 13 at the venue. Davis was a late substitute for Jose Uzcategui, a former IBF titlist who was pulled from the show just 16 days prior to the fight after testing positive for banned substance Recombinant erythropoietin (rEPO).
The win over Davis came just days after Benavidez learned that the WBC would not enforce his mandatory title status versus Alvarez, instead agreeing to have an interim title at stake for his next fight.
Plant and Benavidez both held separate super middleweight titles for roughly eleven months. Plant defeated Uzcategui to win the IBF strap in January 2019, four months after Benavidez’s first WBC title reign ended after testing positive for cocaine. Benavidez was back in the title picture eight months after Plant’s title win, regaining his old belt following a ninth-round stoppage of Anthony Dirrell in September 2019.
The second title reign for Benavidez ended without a single title defense, having lost the belt at the scale after weighing 170 ¾ pounds for an August 2020 fight with Alexis Angulo. The WBC belt was only at stake for Angulo, who Benavidez stopped after ten rounds.
The height of their rivalry to date saw the two camps get into a brief but physical altercation at City Athletic Boxing gym in Las Vegas sometime in 2018. The longstanding beef between camps existed before that run-in and remains in place as both fighters eye another title run.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox