David Benavidez joins The Last Stand Podcast with Brian Custer to discuss his upcoming May 2 cruiserweight title fight against Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez. Benavidez will be moving up from light heavyweight for this shot at snagging a world title in a third weight class, and looks forward to the opportunity and putting on a great show for Cinco de Mayo weekend. Here’s some of what he had to say below with the full video interview at the top!
Benavidez on moving up to cruiserweight to fight Zurdo
“As has been apparent, I’ve been trying to make the biggest and best fights happen, and I haven’t made the fights that I want happen as of late because of other reasons for other fighters, but it looks like everything is going to happen. Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev look like it’s going to be a good option — not for this year, maybe for next year.
“But while I wait I want to achieve my own greatness, be in my own lane, follow the footsteps of the greats. So, instead of me — I could’ve just got a fight with an easy opponent at 175, defended my title — but there was an opportunity that came up with Zurdo Ramirez. My team reached out to them and we made a deal and here we are now. And this is going to be my first fight headlining Cinco de Mayo weekend, so it’s really big.”
On his sparring experience with Zurdo
“I sparred him a lot. Actually, I was getting him ready when he fought for his first world title at 168 against Arthur Abraham…We’ve done hundreds of rounds, maybe 200, somewhere around there…I can hold that information, I have a really good memory. Things change in fighters but not really so much, so there’s obviously going to be a lot of new stuff he does, but there’s going to be a lot of old stuff he does, too. So it’s just getting that information I learned from him back then, applying it, I know his weak hand, I know his strong hand. So it’s just putting together a game plan and just going in there.
“I’m going up 25 lbs from 175 so I’m very excited, I don’t have to lose any weight. So I feel like I’m going to come in stronger because of that, and there’s just a lot going on behind this fight. I want to make my own history, once I capture this title this is going to be my third weight class that I become world champion in. So there’s a lot of motivation going behind this fight.”
On how he sees the fight playing out
“Every time I envision it, I envision me knocking him out, but it’s another story to get that done. I know his weaknesses, I know his strengths, and now it’s just about me putting together a good game plan together, follow the game plan, and I know I can hurt him a lot in this fight.”
On what happens after this fight
“I don’t want people to get it twisted, I’m not going to stay up here at cruiserweight. What I wanted to do…I wanted to come up, get the cruiserweight titles and then I want to go back down to fight Bivol or Beterbiev, and then after that go back up to cruiserweight. So we have a good game plan behind this. We have a lot of good fights to make happen.”
