12/14/2023 0 Comments Gavril boxer![]() Right there backstage, he said he would do an immediate rematch and he honored his word. “David handled himself with class,” said Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, Gavril’s promoter. Benavidez was backstage after the fight, soaking it all in, when he first heard about the rematch. The result was a split decision in Benavidez’s favor, but it wasn’t met with universal acceptance. “When I got home, he didn’t answer and it just didn’t feel right.”īenavidez honored his uncle the best way he knew how: He fought fiercely, competing with an elite opponent who was highly motivated on even terms. I’m at the gym and I’ll call you when I get back home,’ ” Benavidez said. “The last words I told him were, ‘I’m going to call you back. Benavidez was training when the call came in. They’d spoken on the phone the day Balladares died. Balladares “had seen a lot, you know?” Benavidez said, and came out of the military after about 10 years of service different than he’d gone in. The death hit Benavidez hard for many reasons. I wanted to become the champion that he knew I was going to be.” You’re going to be a world champion.’ That motivated me a lot. “I was a little bit tired, but I could hear my uncle saying, ‘Push forward, bud. “In the later rounds, I felt him,” Benavidez said. But he could hear his uncle’s voice in his head, urging him to fight harder. ![]() There were times in the fight when Benavidez’s resources were at a low ebb, and he wasn’t sure if he could push through. Benavidez was worn down by the flu and by the nonstop pressure Gavril applied. The bout against Gavril was a Fight of the Year contender, and it was a grueling, physical affair. That just makes you stronger as a person.” It was something I’d trained for my whole life, and sometimes, we need to go through adversity. ![]() But I started thinking that if he had any say in it, he wouldn’t want me to pull out of the fight. “I stopped training for a couple of days, three, four days,” Benavidez said before one of his final workouts. Police negotiated with him for an hour, but when police saw him holding a weapon, an officer fatally shot Balladares.īenavidez’s first thought was to cancel the fight, but he quickly changed his mind. He was close with his uncle and they’d recently spoken.Ī witness told police that Balladares was screaming that the Veterans Administration Hospital didn’t care about him. The incident happened in late July, in the middle of Benavidez’s camp. His uncle, Moises Balladares, a 33-year-old veteran who had served in Afghanistan and developed post-traumatic stress disorder, was shot and killed by police in Avondale, Arizona. He handled his first title shot like a seasoned pro and believes the result will be more emphatically in his favor this time around.Īnd that’s because he faced down a tragedy. He won the title and will make his first defense on Saturday at Mandalay Bay when he rematches with Gavril in a nationally televised bout on Showtime. “That took a lot out of me, but I did what I had to do,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. Worse, Benavidez got the flu the week before the fight. ![]() He was fighting veteran Ronald Gavril at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas for the vacant WBC super middleweight title, three months shy of his 21st birthday. That was the situation David Benavidez faced in September. The opponent is elite.įor a 20-year-old who has never been through anything remotely like it, it can be a career-killer. Fighting for a world title for the first time can be overwhelming for a boxer, even an experienced one. ![]()
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