Promoter Sampson Lewkowicz says he’ll do whatever it takes to make next year’s headline fight on Cinco de Mayo feature his light heavyweight titleholder, David Benavidez, against the winner of the likely Dmitry Bivol-Artur Beterbiev rubber match.

Even as Benavidez has ascended through the ranks at super middleweight and light heavyweight, he has been left out of the biggest fights so far. Facing the Bivol-Beterbiev III winner would be the most monumental bout of his career by some distance. Lewkowicz has one year to make it happen. 

“After watching Canelo Alvarez Saturday night and how he looked, I wouldn’t put him in with Benavidez for fear he’d [Canelo] be badly injured,” Lewkowicz said in a press release. “David Benavidez will fight in the fall and then be ready for Cinco de Mayo to face either Bivol or Beterbiev, where the torch will finally be passed to him as the new face of boxing.”

Lewkowicz is referring to Alvarez’s dreadfully flat 12-round decision win over William Scull. Scull avoided exchanges at all costs, leading to dismay and outrage among viewers, and even light reprimanding from the referee. Alvarez threw just 152 punches in total, 63 of which were jabs. Alvarez has denied Benavidez an opportunity to fight him for years. 

After the Alvarez-Scull fight and a similarly dull slate in New York City’s Times Square on Friday, pound-for-pound star Naoya Inoue and the Lewkowicz-promoted Ramon Cardenas headlined on Sunday and put on a violent eight-round thriller that many felt saved the few days of fights from total disaster. 

Lewkowicz feels it saved boxing, too.

He thinks many of the other fights this weekend betrayed the spirit of Cinco de Mayo and could have heavily damaged the sport’s integrity.

Fortunately, Lewkowicz says, Sunday’s electric Inoue-Cardenas fight, in which undisputed junior featherweight champion Inoue got off the canvas in Round 2 to stop Cardenas – as well as the intense firefight in the co-feature between undefeated featherweight titleholder Rafael Espinoza and challenger Edward Vazquez – bailed out the sport’s reputation.

“You can’t buy good fights,” said Lewkowicz, the exclusive promoter of Benavidez and co-promoter of Cardenas along with Paco Damian of Paco Presents and Garry Jonas of ProBox TV (Jonas also owns BoxingScene). 

“Those two events in New York and Saudi Arabia cost in the high tens of millions, and they were nothing compared to Sunday’s Top Rank event, which cost a fraction of that amount but delivered the kind of action we needed to save face for boxing.”

Lewkowicz also thinks Cardenas has more to show the boxing world.

“Ramon’s career will change trajectory now, as he showed he belongs among the top fighters at junior featherweight and bantamweight,” he said.