David Benavidez laid out a wish list featuring Jai Opetaia, Artur Beterbiev, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury, but his willingness to skip ahead to Usyk shows how quickly his cruiserweight plans could change.
“We got two great fights at cruiserweight before we get up there first,” Benavidez said to Inside Ring Show. “We got Jai Opetaia, then I think Beterbiev is going to come up to cruiserweight.”
“If we can get a fight in with Usyk and Tyson Fury, then that’s something I’m willing to do.”
Benavidez appears to smell the money available at heavyweight. He describes his ambitions as a search for greatness, but Usyk and Fury also offer the possibility of enormous paydays. His interest extends beyond spending years building a cruiserweight reign.
The proposed sequence assumes plenty. Benavidez would need to secure those fights and win them to keep building toward the next one. Opetaia could derail that route through his southpaw combinations, movement, and experience at 200 pounds.
Beterbiev brings another threat, although Benavidez says there is interest from the other side.
“Beterbiev has definitely reached out to our team, and he’s been actively trying to make that fight,” he said.
That is more concrete than simply naming an opponent, but it still leaves the weight, timing, and agreement unresolved.
More revealing was Benavidez’s response to the possibility of Opetaia fighting Deontay Wilder. Rather than waiting, he suggested taking his business straight to heavyweight.
“If we can’t get that fight for Cinco de Mayo with Jai Opetaia, then we’ll do it with Usyk.”
That would be a substantial leap. Usyk’s movement and accuracy would test whether Benavidez could apply his pressure against an elite heavyweight. Fury’s size and reach would create a different set of difficulties.
Benavidez’s ambition is clear. What remains uncertain is how much of this list he can turn into reality. Naming four major opponents is easy compared with negotiating the fights and beating the men across from him.
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