David Benavidez, WBC outmaneuver Zuffa for world title fight

Friday evening news dumps are par for the course in the news world, but this development between David Benavidez, Jai Opetaia, and Noel Mikaelian was a doozy.

On Friday, BoxingScene reported that Jai Opetaia was finalizing a deal to fight Noel Mikaelian, the WBC cruiserweight champion, later this year. Opetaia is the former IBF cruiserweight champion who was stripped of his title after he fought for the unsanctioned Zuffa cruiserweight title earlier this year.

(Long story short, Zuffa Boxing has promised to abolish the sanctioning bodies and their alphabet belts and replace them with Zuffa belts. Even after Jai signed with Zuffa, the IBF said it would sanction his January fight, but during the week of the fight, it changed its mind after Zuffa said its cruiserweight title would also be on the line. The IBF then stripped Opetaia of his title, and Opetaia is now suing the IBF.)

Opetaia and Zuffa Boxing head honcho Turki Alalshih have been pushing for a fight against Benavidez. Still, Benavidez has said he is only interested in fighting title holders, which Mikaelian is, and Opetaia currently isn't (he holds The Ring belt, but it isn't sanctioned and is more ceremonial).

So on Friday, the news broke that Zuffa had run around Benavidez, who holds the WBA and WBO cruiserweight titles, to negotiate a fight with Mikaelian, the other title holder in the division. This was huge news that would mean that Zuffa could potentially control the fighter who holds the green, WBC belt.

The sourcing for the story also threw in a little shot, saying that the reason Benavidez was not fighting Opetaia was that he was still waiting for a fight with Canelo.

That was the story social media ran with, even though literally two paragraphs later, Benavidez's promoter Sampson Lekowicz is quoted as saying that his fighter "doesn't want to fight for the Zuffa title… he doesn't want to fight Opetaia for nothing," once again alluding to Opetaia's lack of a belt.

That would have been enough drama for a Friday evening, but the great sport of boxing had more drama in mind.

David Benavidez, WBC, outmaneuvered Zuffa boxing for cruiserweight title fight

Friday evening, it seemed like Zuffa had pulled a coup, stealing David Benavidez's potential next opponent and potentially the WBC cruiserweight belt, the most coveted of the alphabet belts.

But then the second Friday news dumped when the WBC officially ordered their cruiserweight champion, Noel Mikaelian, to defend his title against Benavidez, the WBO and WBA champion at that weight.

This is unusual, but not unprecedented. The sanctioning bodies operate as if the champions of their rivals don't exist. They don't rank them or order their champions to fight other champions. Usually.

Unification bouts happen, but they are very rarely ever ordered by the sanctioning bodies themselves. Usually, sanctioning bodies order their champions to fight one of the other fighters they rank themselves.

So why the break from tradition?

WBC follows its own rules (for once) with Jai Opetaia's decision

One of the biggest complaints fans have about sanctioning bodies is that they don't follow their own rules. This time, the WBC is doing exactly what its bylaws say it should.

Section 3.3.b of the WBCs bylaws states that a champion can be mandated to fight "a champion or a highly rated boxer of another weight division" with the approval of the majority of its board of governors.

Benavidez currently holds the WBC light heavyweight title and has previously held the WBC super middleweight title on two different occasions. So, needless to say, they like him over at the WBC.

Officially, the WBC says it received a petition from Lekowicz to mandate Mikaelian to make his first mandatory defense against Benavidez. Its board of directors considered the petition and granted Benavidez the title defense based on his stature as their light heavyweight champion and the vote of their board.

Unfortunately for Jai Opetaia, he's once again caught in the middle of a boxing civil war between the WBC, WBA, WBO, and IBF on one side and Zuffa on the other. So not only are they following their own rules, but they are also screwing over a rival in the process.

Earlier this year, Dana White, Zuffa president and CEO, said his fight against the sanctioning bodies was like competing against babies. It seems like at least one of those babies is growing up right before our eyes.

Related: Rolly Romero treatment shows nothing too low for boxing sanctioning bodies

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This story was originally published May 31, 2026 at 5:34 PM.