{"id":793247,"date":"2026-02-27T20:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/793247\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T20:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:18:11","slug":"gilberto-ramirez-compares-sparring-canelo-and-david-benavidez-he-has-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/793247\/","title":{"rendered":"Gilberto Ramirez compares sparring Canelo and David Benavidez: “He has power”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gilberto Ramirez<\/a> has sparred Canelo Alvarez<\/a> and David Benavidez<\/a>, both at different stages of his career, and credits one of them for hitting particularly hard.<\/p>\n

Unified world cruiserweight champion Ramirez will face Benavidez on May 2, defending his WBO and WBA titles at Las Vegas\u2019 T-Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n

Since suffering his only professional blemish, a points loss to Dmitry Bivol in 2022, Ramirez has firmly cemented himself as an elite operator at 200lbs.<\/p>\n

Consecutive victories over Arsen Goulamirian and Chris Billam-Smith saw him topple two world champions in 2024, before defending his titles via another unanimous decision, this time against Yuniel Dorticos<\/a>, in June 2025.<\/p>\n

Benavidez, meanwhile, secured two-division world title status last year after being upgraded from \u2018interim\u2019 to full WBC light-heavyweight, with Bivol having relinquished his belt.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old then made a maiden defence of his crown in November, stopping Anthony Yarde in round seven<\/a>, which led to him negotiating a cruiserweight clash with Ramirez.<\/p>\n

During his time as the WBC \u2018interim\u2019 champion at 168lbs, many felt that Canelo, the then-super-middleweight king, was avoiding a mandatory title defence against Benavidez.<\/p>\n

But while we can only imagine how a matchup between Alvarez and Benavidez would unfold, Ramirez has kindly offered an insight into his sparring sessions with the both of them.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Fight Hub TV<\/a>, the 34-year-old hinted at the power being more apparent with Canelo than it was with his next opponent.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c[The sparring was] way different because Canelo is short and, at that time, I was [at] 168[lbs]. I was super skinny.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I moved up [in weight] and moved to the US, and I started sparring with David and different guys \u2013 bigger guys.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanelo \u2013 he\u2019s good. He has power; he has a lot of faints; he moves really well. And Benavidez, he presses you all the time; you don\u2019t have time to breathe. You have to just keep going. And [Benavidez] likes to be [on the] inside.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ramirez shared rounds with Canelo during his reign as the WBO super-middleweight champion, while the Benavidez sparring seemingly came following his brief excursion to 175lbs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gilberto Ramirez has sparred Canelo Alvarez and David Benavidez, both at different stages of his career, and credits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-793247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116144446201628308","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}