There aren’t many fights that fans want to see more than Saul ‘Canelo‘ Alvarez versus David Benavidez.
‘The Mexican Monster’ has been chasing a world title shot at Canelo for years, but even his position as super-middleweight WBC mandatory position has proved futile. The unified champion has shown little interest in facing Benavidez, claiming the 27-year-old brings nothing to the table except an extra 25lbs on fight night. He has slapped a $200m price tag on making it happen.
One man who isn’t happy about the situation is former two-weight world champion Paulie Malignaggi. Speaking to talkSPORT Boxing, the outspoken pundit and former world champion wishes Canelo would vacate rather than avoid fighters and predicts Benavidez would ‘run him over like a train’ if the two did meet.
“I don’t care who Canelo fights if he would vacate the titles. Personally, I’ve been saying this for two years, I think David Benavidez runs him over like a train running over a car that’s stuck in the train tracks. I stick with that. His apprehension to fight the mandatory continuously only cements my opinion.
I don’t think he’s gonna fight Benavidez, the only reason I wanna see him fight Benavidez is for the belts because I don’t even think it would be a good fight. I’m more excited about other things than I am about Canelo.”
With Benavidez moving up to light-heavyweight for his last outing a potential clash between Canelo and Terence Crawford has once again built momentum, but Malignaggi ‘isn’t crazy’ on that happening.
“I think Canelo is looking for easy pickings. Easy pickings later in his career. The fact he’s been allowed to avoid his mandatory for three years is absolutely appalling. The sanctioning bodies should be ashamed of themselves, absolutely disgraceful.
But I think he would possibly consider Crawford, but he wants a crazy amount of money. Because he sees the kind of money Turki Alalshikh pays, and I think he’s trying to take advantage of it which has rightfully offended Turki Alalshikh. I’m not crazy about the fight, I think weight classes exist for a reason. Crawford has been amazing, his talent has been something that has overcome the weight class deficit, but at a certain point, you’re gonna start to see that.
The Crawford vs Israil Madrimov fight was right there. I don’t understand why there’s this talk about Crawford and Canelo. I think if anything that fight right there should tell you he’s not able to go up that many more weight classes.”
Canelo returns to the ring on September 14 against unbeaten Edger Berlanga in Las Vegas.
