By Norm Frauenheim
Boxing gets a head start on a New Year next Saturday with a card in Riyadh loaded with potential to set the table for 2026.
Mostly, it’s a card about expectations and an emerging generation poised to take center stage.
It’s face: David Benavidez, who captures the imaginations and hopes for what many foresee in the year after Terence Crawford-Canelo Alvarez.
It’s still not clear what either Crawford or Canelo will do. From rematch to retirement, the inevitable speculation continues to produce names, possibilities and fantasy. Nobody knows, not even them. But Crawford’s masterful, definitive decision over Canelo in mid-September had an air of finality about it.
One generation is moving on and a new one is moving in.
For now, at least, there’s a growing perception that it’ll be led by Benavidez. First, however, the Phoenix-born-and-forged fighter must prove – prove decisively — that he’s here to stay at a new weight, light-heavy, against a competent journeyman, Anthony Yarde, on a DAZN card that also includes welterweight Devin Haney and Super Fly Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez.
Haney is there in a fight to re-affirm his credentials and re-claim his place in the future against welterweight belt-holder Brian Norman, Jr.
Rodriguez, the youngest and highest rated pound-for-pound contender, is there for a Saudi paycheck. He’s a main event in any other part of the world.
Against Argentine Fernando Daniel Martinez, Rodriguez has an opportunity to unify the 115-pound title and strengthen chances at landing an eventual monster date against Naoya Inoue, Japan’s Rising Son whose supremacy faces a looming challenge in Junto Nakatani.
Every opening bell on Nov. 22 signals an intriguing look ahead, but none is capturing more attention than Benavidez, who is within a month of his 29th birthday.
He enters his prime, full of confidence at the beginning of what figures to be the most important chapter in his unlikely career from a forgotten overweight kid to perhaps the most feared fighter of his day.
The perceived fear is creating its own momentum, including recent endorsements from former heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. Both called the unbeaten Benavidez the most unbeatable fighter.
Emboldened, Benavidez told reporters during a training camp in Dubai that he never felt stronger. In large part there is growing confidence in Benavidez because his future is no longer tied to Canelo.
For years, Benavidez chased Canelo in hopes of a 168-pound showdown. It was futile. In moving up the scale, Benavidez finds a new and unlimited horizon, away from Canelo’s suffocating influence. Now, he has a chance to define himself on his own terms. He moves up and on, a man with an unencumbered opportunity to shape his own destiny.
But, again, he first he must face Yarde, whose resume suggests he could be a so-called gatekeeper. To wit: Benavidez must beat him to gain entry to a place among the elite.
Yarde has tried to crash the party twice, first against Sergey Kovalev and then Artur Beterbiev. He lost both. But the experience indicates Yarde, a relative newcomer to boxing, has seen and endured light-heavyweight power and skill that Benavidez has not.
Odds suggest Benavidez will win easily. He’s a consensus pick, favored by odds as one-sided as 12-to-1.
Still, there’s skepticism, some of it brought on by the way he got the World Boxing Council’s version of the title. He was awarded the belt when Dmitri Bivol vacated it. An awarded belt is like a certificate of achievement, a bureaucratic piece of paper. Only punches can validate it.
That, of course, is what Benavidez intends to do while also planning on what happens after he does. There’s a risk in looking past somebody with Yarde’s experience. Then again, Benavidez’ evident confidence is a sign that maybe – just maybe – he’s as good as Tyson and Lewis think he is.
Already, the unbeaten Benavidez is talking about fights, post-Yarde. Before breaking camp in Dubai and heading to Riyadh late last week, he told reporters he expected to fight Callum Smith after Yarde. Smith had been in reported negotiations to before Yarde suddenly got the nod.
“We’ll probably get Callum next,’’ Benavidez told reporters.
Then, he talked in some frustration about uncertainty over when he’ll get a chance to fight Beterbiev and/or Bivol. Bivol is coming off back surgery. After they split their first two fights, a third is still possible.
“I’m disappointed I’m not fighting one of these guys,’’ said Benavidez, who remembers all the frustration he felt in his futile wait for Canelo.
Benavidez went on to say he respected Bivol for making moves that have kept alive a possible trilogy. Still, he wasn’t happy at the uncertainty about when or if a third would ever happen.
For now, it doesn’t matter.
Benavidez’ newfound future starts with Yarde.
Back to AZ
Eddie Hearn announced plans Friday for early 2026, including Feb. 28 at Desert Diamond Arena in Phoenix suburb Glendale for a bout between Emanuel Navarrete-Eduardo “Sugar” Nunez for two pieces of the junior-lightweight title. Navarrete has the WBO belt; Nunez the IBF.
Initially, the fight was planned for early March at the NBA arena on the Suns home floor in downtown Phoenix.
It’s the first major card in the Phoenix area in more than a year. Phoenix had emerged as a go-to market before Saudi money changed how and where boxing does business.
Example: Super Fly Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, a main-event attraction, against Argentine Fernando Daniel Martinez in a 115-pound unification fight on a Riyadh undercard Nov. 22.
Boxers, prize fighters, go where the biggest prize is. It’s huge in Saudi Arabia. But the downside is for the crowds and towns that create those stars. They get left behind.
Bam became a star in Phoenix, thanks to Hearn’s promotional skills and the city’s proven appreciation for fighters in the smallest weight classes. It goes all the way back to Hall-of-Fame junior-flyweight Michael Carbajal.
Guess here: The Bam-Martinez fight in downtown Phoenix or Glendale would have drawn a crowd of more than 12,000. The overall health of the boxing business would have been better off if Bam-Martinez had been featured as a main event in Phoenix instead of a prelim on an undercard in Riyadh.
Pay the fighters. But remember the fans. Forget them and eventually nobody gets paid.
