It's a pleasure to welcome into our show today the WBC's interim super middleweight champion,
David Benavitez. David, I want you to know you are in the
year and a half i've been working on this podcast. My first three time
guest is does not get you any kind of special bonus. However, thank
you very much for doing this. How's everything going getting ready for your big
fight? Yeah, it's going good. Man. Then I just want to
tell you thank you. I respect you. You know, you're one of
the top sports shrinkers in boxing for a long long time, so it's definitely
an honor to be on here. And I feel good, man, I
feel amazing. You know, every camp has been I've been getting stronger and
stronger, faster and faster. I'm even getting more experience. So now for
this fight, you know, we got another tough competitor, you know,
a lefty guy that moves around a lot. People saying that he's an outbox
mean, just like they said Caleb Planne was gonna outbox me. But you
know, I feel like I'm just on a different level than these guys,
you know, and then I'm going to continue to show it, you know,
he has a lot of experience, but I have a lot of experien
myself too, the professional for ten years. I've been working with high class
fighters when I was sparring with them when I was thirteen years old. So
you know, I have a lot of tricks out my sleeves too. But
I've been working hard. Man. This is this is the fight where it
gets closer and closer. Every fight gets close and closer the Canela fight.
So I just got to, you know, stay working hard, stay motivated,
and you know, I'm very excited going to show the fans what I
got to offer this fight November twenty fifth. Well, I should probably mention
that we're talking about the undefeated Demetrius Andre, a two division world champion in
the junior middleweight and the middleweight division, now boxing in the super middleweight division.
In this fight will take place, of course, November twenty fifth,
at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, live on Showtime pay per view.
And when I was thinking about, you know, the types of thoughts about
this fight in my mind, I was looking at your record and now early
on, you know, you beat a couple of undefeated guys way back,
you know, when they were like two and oh and that type of thing,
and one fighter that was not a top guy, but I think maybe
it was about twelve and oh. But this is before you were a top
contender, you know, or at the championship level. This is gonna be
the first guy that you faced that is undefeated, that's also an elite fighter.
And I wonder when you go into a match like this and he's never
lost before, obviously you've never lost before either, is there like added motivation
just to be the guy that takes the O because so many times today's boxing
at the top level, it seems like fighters are are sometimes unwilling to risk
that perfect record against another, you know, top guy who's also undefeated.
Yeah, it's definitely gives me more motivation to be the first one to say
that, yeah, I beat Demetrius, and it gives me more motivation to
go in there and to do basically put the to have the fighting look the
way I want to have. You know, I think I'm gonna go in
there's gonna be a landslide either I stop him late or it's gonna be a
dominating performance. So I mean, I've been working extremely hard and you know,
he's undefeated, So I'm gonna be the first one to say that.
I could be the first one to say that I beat Demetris Andres. So
that definitely gives me more of a motivation as well. So he, as
I mentioned, he's a two division world champion, he will he's undefeated.
As we talked about, here's the United States Olympian. He's a world amateur
champion, got a lot of accolades, but hasn't had the big fight yet
as a professional. You are his big fight so far, and I know
from talking in previously that without question, this would be his biggest win.
Do you think that this would be your biggest win? You've got some good
wins, but I don't know if I think that Plants a bigger win than
this one would be. What do you think about that? Yeah, I
think it'd be a bigger win, definitely. I feel like every fight is
getting harder and harder, but that's better for me. So I feel like
the more I go up in the ranks, the better fighters I fight and
the better fighters I beat. So you're a guy between this fight that's coming
up in November twenty fifth, your last fight in March against Plant that will
have had. You had two fights this year, both against top level fighters
at the upper echelon of your weight class, both guys who are former world
champions. One loss between them that was Plants, you know, a loss
to Canelo, and you take pride. I mean, a lot of guys,
they even when they fight twice, it's one maybe big time fight and
one like a little bit of a lesser fight. You seem to me at
least this year anyway that I can think of, is the is the the
only guy at the top level of the sport who's taken on two top guys
in a row in the same year, back to back without like a lesser
touch. Let's say in there, Does that give you pride that you're willing
to do that and why are you different than some of these other cats?
Yeah, that definitely gives me pride because I just want to show everybody that,
you know, I'm willing to risk at all to prove myself to the
fans. At the end of the day, I want to prove myself to
the fans and to myself that I am the best in this division. And
the only way I do that is going up against the top opposition. Also
I've been professional for the for ten years now. I turned pro when I
was sixteen, and I feel like that was just the groundwork to give me
to where I'm at now. You know that for ten years, It's not
like I was fighting killers. You know, my career really start picking off
the past five years. So now that I got all the experience and now
it is just time to, you know, really go off to the big
guys and fight the best of the best and beat the best of the best.
So this fight's a high class fight. I don't think anybody's going to
dispute that really interesting matchup different styles, of course, But I wonder before
this fight was finalized, this was not like a rumor mill thing. This
was your promoter, Samson Luca was saying. So this was David Morrell's promoter
or co promoter, Liam Margerley is saying, so to me that the two
sides had reached an agreement that you guys would fight each other, and it
didn't happen. And I was wondering, why did that fight not happen,
even though of course you got a good fight in front of you with Andre.
What happened with the Morrell fight that seemed like that was first on the
agenda, at least for your promoter and for his promoter. Well, yeah,
they never talked to me about that. There was on there promotionless,
but I never got to fight myself. You know. I was trying to
go out after Mugia first and then Demetrisandre. The reason so because they're more
established. Yeah, I feel like these guys are more established in the boxing.
That's why I want to go after David Morrell. He has like ten
fights. He's a good fighter. Don't get me wrong. I don't want
to take anything away from he's a great fighter, but I feel like that
fight comes later. Well yeah, I mean Samson could say whatever he wants,
but at the end of the day, we do what I want to
do, you know, and I want to get these fights. I want
to get these guys out the way and then we get more out the way.
Yeah, I mean, I don't listen. I mean, like like
you said, I mean, if you're fighting Andre, great fight. If
you're fighting Morell, great fight. So to me, it was sort of
like, okay, as long as you're fighting another you know, interesting matchup.
So the thing about this fight also between yourself and Demetrius in comparison to
when you were getting ready to fight against Kayleb Plant. I mean, you
know this, you were in the fight, tons of trash talk, a
lot of bad blood, tons of disrespect, you know, a lot of
bad words between everybody on both teams. Seems totally different between yourself and Demetrius.
I know you're both competitors. You both obviously want to win and take
the other guy out, but respectful at the press conference, you know,
complimentary of one another, of each each other's accomplishments. Why is there such
a difference in the way that both of you seem to be approaching this fight
in terms of the outside of the ring business compared to the way it was
between yourself and Plant. It's because with me, to be honest with you,
I'm not really gonna go after a fighter like that in disrespect fighter until
I get disrespected first. If I feel like there's tension in that way,
then I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna protect myself for you know,
defend myself as a man. The way I seen Demetrius, he was cool,
calm, collective. He's never said nothing bad about me. I've never
said nothing bad about him. So we're professionals at the end of the day,
you know, I'm not, you know, And at the end of
the day, we got to show the kids too. You don't always got
to have a big be for talk shit. You know, at the end
of the day, this is professional sports. We're both gentlemen, and we
could we could take it the other way. And I'm still gonna try and
knock him out. I'm just gonna try to take his head off. That
doesn't that doesn't change at all. But the way we could conduct ourselves outside
I mean, one fight acting like this, it kind of shows everybody that
you know, boxing is a classic sport. This is a sport of gentlemen.
It doesn't always have to be shit talking or bad blood this and that,
because at the end of the day, if you're sometimes all that bad
blood, it might lead to a fight before the fight and it focks everything
up, you know what I mean. So we don't want that to happen.
And you know, I don't want to mess my money up. He
doesn't want to mess his money up. And we'll both want to go back
home to our families after and you know, that's how it has to be.
You know, we conducted ourselves like gentlemen and professionals. So one thing
I also found interesting about this is just the fact that your brother, your
older brother, Jose Junior, he's going to be on this card. Also
he's taken on Jamal Charlot, who's returning to the ring for the first time
in two and a half years. He's the WBC Middleway champion, although this
is going to be a non title fight and his fight takes place right before
your main event, at least the way they announced the show, And I
wondered, do you get a little nervous with your brother also on the card
where you know, I mean, you're gonna be concerned about how his result
goes. And also the fact that because your father, Jose Sr. Trains
you, trains him, that he's going to be busy in the ring with
your brother taking care of his fight as you're in the dressing room in the
final preparations for what's a very big fight for yourself. Yeah, So,
to be honest, I do get nervous. I gotta get more nervous to
my brother than from my own fights. I don't get nervous from my fights,
but for him, I think it's just that no control of what happens
with him. You know, he you know obviously, but he's been working
extremely hard, and I feel like this is a great you know, this
is a great comeback. I'm not comeback fight. This is a great opportunity
for him. H And I feel like my brother's gonna I feel like he's
gonna knock Charlo out. You know, everybody says I'm crazy, but you
know, I've been seeing my brothers. I've been smart with him, and
he's looking really good. So I think that's how it's gonna go. But
my dad has his assistant trainers that I could be working in the back,
you know, doing mites, warming up by the time he's finished. And
I will say this, you know, me and Demetris have conducted themselves like
gentlemen. But I think my brother and Charlo they might go hid it at
the press conferences. They might get a little spicy. I think you're right,
that's gonna be That's yeah, that's gonna be a good fight too.
I'm very excited for that fight, and it's gonna be a great fight.
I can't wait to see it. Well, I guess you can't really have
a bene vidia's on a car and have no ship talk. Right, that
doesn't work. Yeah, you mentioned I want to wrap up with this.
Uh. You mentioned earlier about that you still hope, of course, to
get a shot at Canelo Alvarez. He of course is the underspeed champion in
your weight division. You are the WBC's interim title holder. You'll be his
mandatory challenger eventually, obviously, if you keep winning your defenses here now,
Before you even fought Caleb Plant, my perspective was, and I think that
of many boxing media and boxing fans, was that you were the big fight
for Canelo, the defense He had other things he did. He ended up
fighting the other Charlote brother when the brother, Jamal, was unable to do
so. I was hopeful, as were many, that you guys would obviously
fight each other in this spot. That obviously is not happening. Maybe next
year. But I keep thinking to myself that you are I think the guy
that most people says is like the legit number one contender, Dimitrius is there
also, and that the winner of the fight between the two of you guys
is going to be the clear cut I call him the people's mandatory whatever sanctioning
Body says, do you agree with that? And and how likely in your
mind you think is that, because of course you're both with PBC, that
he will fight you next year. I definitely, I do have a feeling
that he's gonna fight me next year. But like I said, we're gonna
stay focused on what we gotta do, and we gotta stay working, and
i gotta come out and I'm gonna look good in this fight, and that's
exactly what I'm gonna do. But I just feel like I'm just knocking out
everybody down. I mean, there's nobody else that one sixty eight that the
people want to see Canelo fight. You know, I've been a mandatory for
the past two years. You know, I won the title eliminator first and
I went into the belt and I'm still haven't got to fight. I just
feel like, you know, the people want to see this fight. But
it's fine if I gotta take everybody out, you know, the top five
contenders and the one sixty away class, That's exactly what I'm gonna do.
I'm not going nowhere, and at the end of the day, I become
more dangerous because I'm getting more experienced. This is my second pay per view
fight. There's big fights for me, big crowd. So I'm you know,
I'm really getting used to this and I'm I'm very comfortable right now.
So whenever that fight happens, I'm gonna be more than ready. And I
feel like it's gonna happen next year. I want to ask you this one
more thing what I just thought of, and I forgot to ask you earlier.
You mentioned that you thought you're gonna just go in there and knock Dimitrius
out, and I under a You mentioned he's south paw, he's got a
great background, experienced, and I wonder, how how is that like the
style wise that you deal with the southpaw style, the technical style, because
your styles are so much different. You're a guy that's obviously a pressure fighter,
a lot of knockouts, a brawler showing a great chin, but he
used that technique, maybe not the biggest puncher, although he's got a ton
of knockdowns. How do you think that that? What is it that you
say that you believe in yourself that you're just gonna be able to basically go
in there and just get rid of them that easily. The way you make
it sound, well, no, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't
mean it like that. It's gonna be a tough fight, you know.
I think this is just my ego taking over. But obviously I know it's
gonna be a hard fight. I gotta go in there. I gotta cut
the distance. I gotta attack the body. I gotta throw a lot of
combinations, you know. I gotta, you know, cut the distance with
the jab. But I didn't you just basically do what I always do,
you know, start at the head end, at the body, cut the
ring off. We you know what he's gonna do. But if he wants
to brawl, we could go that way too. I mean, at the
end of the day, I feel like I'm the bigger, stronger, I'm
the more NAT one s eight pounder, you know. I I think I'm
faster. I'm definitely stronger. So I don't know, we're gonna We're gonna
see what's gonna happen. The thing about me is that this every camp I
have their tremendous camp. So I go into these fights with so much confidence.
You know, I've done twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen rounds,
three four five different sporting partners. So I have tremendous confidence. If it's
gonna happen in the first if it's gonna if I'm gonna hurt them the first
couple round, I'm gonna the first couple rounds. He definitely is gonna get
hurt in this fight. It's just that, you know, we gotta do.
We gotta do what we gotta do. We gotta cut the distance,
we gotta put them in the uncomfortable situations and catch them with the shots.
And it's worked for every other fighter, you know what I mean. So
I have a lot of confidence in myself and my combination. So we're gonna
get this job done. Well. I'm looking forward to this fight. I
think it's a classy matchup, a great style matchup. I wish you the
best of luck, David, and I thank you very much for doing this.
In the best of luck, I'm November forty five, Yes, sir,
thank you.