All That Glitters: Benavidez, Andrade, and the false economy of defending world titles

By Elliot Worsell

YOU will likely be exhausting pressed to discover a higher struggle, statistically, than the one between David Benavidez and Demetrius Andrade this Saturday (November 25) at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas. Together, the gifted super-middleweights carry to the struggle a file of 57-0 and have, at completely different factors, held the following “world” titles: WBC super-middleweight; WBC interim super-middleweight; WBO middleweight; WBO super-welterweight. They have, in different phrases, each established themselves as not solely profitable fighters, as is indicated by their unbeaten data, but additionally champions who’ve excelled at a world-class stage, each profitable and defending numerous belts in numerous weight lessons.

It is fairly attention-grabbing, then, to think about that on Saturday night time, when Benavidez and Andrade meet in an effort to advance to the subsequent stage, there will likely be no world titles on the line. Even extra attention-grabbing than that, although, is the incontrovertible fact that as a substitute of a unfavourable that is deemed a constructive and does completely nothing to detract from both the high quality of the matchup or its significance. Indeed, if something, the lack of world titles and the baggage they inevitably carry serves solely to boil a matchup like this all the way down to its necessities, permitting us to focus tougher on the issues that actually matter; that’s, the skills of the two boxers.

Without the messiness of belts, you see, boxing, basically, turns into a less complicated and extra accessible sport, which is one thing we have now recognized for a while. An absence of them, corresponding to in a struggle like this, additionally has a method of shining a lightweight on how pointless they’re in phrases of constructing a struggle and how doubtlessly damaging they are often in the context of constructing a fighter. After all, regardless of their successes as “world” champions, the likes of Benavidez and Andrade are something however family names. In truth, one may go as far as to argue that their struggle – which, on paper, must be an enormous one – has in some methods, fairly than been helped by it, been adversely affected by the truth they’ve each been world champions in the previous.

This is especially true in the case of Andrade, for whom a world title may even be seen as one thing of a crutch or, worse, a poisoned chalice. Certainly, as champion, each at super-welterweight and middleweight, he was typically accused of having developed an inflated view of himself, his value, and his standing – a world champion, in any case – which, in flip, might have prevented him chasing greater fights, extra profitable ones, and placing his prime years to raised use.

Now, at the age of 35, he finally will get a defining struggle of kinds; or at the very least a struggle by which he can show his credentials and world-class means. This regardless of the truth Andrade, 32-0 (19), gained his first world title, the WBO’s super-welterweight belt, 10 years in the past virtually to the day.

Ask him and he’ll little question say that solely goes to show his longevity and greatness, however what it ought to signify as effectively is a lesson, each for Andrade and for others; those that win a world title and then purchase into the thought, or phantasm, that they’re the primary in the world with out doing anything to show it.

That’s to not say Andrade is fully at fault, of course, for there may be each probability he might have been prevented on account of his awkward fashion and undoubted high quality. Yet what can’t be ignored, both, is that Andrade, as weird because it sounds, seems to have spent 10 years of his profession accumulating world title wins, which in the finish do little for his legacy, earlier than then, in 2023, taking a struggle with no belts on the line which may, who is aware of, characterize the begin of him constructing one.

For Benavidez, in the meantime, there may be much less of a priority so far as time. He, at 26, nonetheless has a lot on his facet, but he may even know, having flirted with the WBC super-middleweight belt since 2017, that it’s about time he both did one thing with that belt or, as is true right here, with out it.

Taken out of his fingers, maybe, each the belt and the determination, Benavidez’s outdated WBC super-middleweight strap is at present the property of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, which suggests there isn’t any longer the temptation, if certainly there ever was, to hunt consolation and security with it in his possession. Now, conversely, Benavidez, 27-0 (23), should take fights like this one towards Andrade in an effort to (a) improve his profile and due to this fact his marketability and (b) put himself in the store window for a title struggle towards Alvarez. Should that then occur for Benavidez – which, if he wins this weekend, is a definite risk – he’ll finally know not solely what it feels wish to be concerned in a world title struggle in the truest sense, but additionally what it feels wish to be a star; a really wealthy one at that.

David Benavidez (Getty Images)