LAS VEGAS – David Benavidez or David Morrell Jr. will have a guaranteed front-row seat for the Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol light heavyweight championship rematch February 22.
The Ring has learned that Turki Alalshikh will invite the winner of the Benavidez-Morrell match Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena to attend the second Beterbiev-Bivol bout three weeks later at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Alalshikh, who owns The Ring and is the head of Riyadh Season, wants to match the Benavidez-Morrell and Beterbiev-Bivol winners next on a Riyadh Season card later this year.
Beterbiev holds The Ring’s light heavyweight title. Bivol is ranked No. 1, Benavidez No. 2 and Morrell No. 8 among The Ring’s top 10 contenders in the 175-pound division.
The 28-year-old Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs), a Phoenix native, and the 27-year-old Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs), a Miami resident raised in Cuba, are set to fight for Benavidez’s WBC interim and Morrell’s WBA “world” 175-pound championships in the main event of a Premier Boxing Champions pay-per-view show.
The WBC also announced recently that the whoever emerges victorious Saturday night will become its mandatory challenger to the Beterbiev vs. Bivol winner.
DraftKings listed Benavidez as almost a 2-1 favorite Saturday morning to defeat Morrell. The four-fight show, which will start at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET; 1 a.m. GMT), is available via Amazon’s Prime Video.
The Russian-born, Montreal-based Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) will defend his Ring, IBF, IBO, WBA super, WBC and WBO crowns versus Russia’s Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs), who lost his WBA belt to Beterbiev on October 12. Beterbiev won that 12-round bout by majority decision, but Bivol took him the distance for the first time in 11 years as a pro.
DraftKings favors Beterbiev over Bivol by a slimmer margin (-125/+120) than it lists the relentless Benavidez as a favorite to overcome Morrell, a southpaw whose speed and power make him a live underdog in by far the most difficult fight of his five-year professional career.
Keith Idec is a staff writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing.