While Benavidez scored an impressive win at UFC Minneapolis, the realities of an injured champ-champ are what they are.
The UFC’s flyweight division has been the redheaded stepchild of the promotion for a while now, with every losing fighter getting cut and many others seeing the writing on the wall and moving up lest they find themselves on the wrong side of a contract release. Two guys that didn’t are Joseph Benavidez and Jussier Formiga, and they fought Saturday night at UFC on ESPN 3: Ngannou vs. dos Santos in a thrilling fight that saw Benavidez score a head kick knockout win (watch that finish here).
You’d think a spectacular finish at 125 pounds would guarantee Benavidez a title shot, but things are complicated at the top. Flyweight champ Henry Cejudo is the latest UFC champ champ and not only has a bantamweight belt to defend but shoulder surgery to recover from. That didn’t bother Benavidez, who said he’d be willing to wait.
“I’d hold out,” Benavidez said at the post-fight press conference. “I mean, [Cejudo’s] in surgery. I’ve sat out months before, I’ve had ACL surgery 18 months. I’ve gone in between fights active 10 months. That was just for a fight because there were no opponents. In this case, the opponent I want, there’s a huge prize there and it’s the fight to make. What? I gotta wait four or five months I think he said until he can fight? That’s nothing.”
But UFC president Dana White took to the ESPN+ post-fight show to voice his thoughts on that, and unsurprisingly he didn’t think Benavidez going inactive was a great bet.
“It’s definitely not good for Benavidez,” Dana said. “He’s going to be in this waiting period, but I know that [Cejudo] came out and said he wants to defend [the bantamweight] belt first.”
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t impressed with the performance from “Joey Two-Times.”
”Benavidez looked good tonight,” White said. He got busted up in that first round. He got two really bad cuts in really bad places. He didn’t let it get to his head, and didn’t let it throw his game off. Landed that nice head kick. Benavidez has been a guy that’s been in this company for a very long time. He’s a hard-working guy, tows the line, does whatever he needs to do. It’s good to see him win tonight against a really tough opponent and get into the position he’s in.”
What position that is, exactly? Front of a line that’s moving nowhere fast, it seems.