David Benavidez misses weight, stripped of WBC title

David Benavidez may be the first fighter in boxing history to lose the same title twice without ever losing a fight.

The 23-year-old Benavidez has been stripped of the WBC super middleweight title after failing to make weight today in Connecticut, coming in at 170¾ for his 168-pound title defense against Roamer Alexis Angulo, which is set to air tomorrow night on Showtime, and still will. The fight will go ahead, but the belt is now vacant and only on the line for Angulo.

Angulo (26-1, 22 KO) weighed in at 167½, and the other two fights on the card (Rolando Romero vs Jackson Marinez at lightweight and Otto Wallin vs Travis Kauffman at heavyweight) are good to go, too.

Benavidez (22-0, 19 KO) first won the WBC super middleweight title in Sept. 2017, taking the vacant belt with a win over Ronald Gavril. But he was stripped about a year later when he failed a drug test (cocaine), and he took the belt back from Anthony Dirrell last September. He will now not make a single title defense, and he and his team say the weight simply wasn’t coming off this week.

That tidbit means there’s a good chance this won’t be a thing where they look to stick around 168, but instead Benavidez could be headed to light heavyweight.