\n<\/p>\n
At the age of 12, David Benavidez weighed 18st 6lb (117kg).<\/b><\/p>\n
When the American steps into the ring on Saturday against Briton Anthony Yarde as the defending WBC light-heavyweight champion, he will be 12st 7lb (79kg).<\/p>\n
Now 28 and a two-weight world champion, images on social media of Benavidez as an overweight 13-year-old training with his father show just how far he has come to get into the shape necessary to reach the top.<\/p>\n
“At the time, I would have never imagined I would be a top fighter and one of the biggest in boxing today,” he told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“I always had faith in myself. I always knew that with hard work, anything is possible. I’ve never given up on myself. I started off and I wasn’t in shape.<\/p>\n
“I did have the will and the dedication to get to where I wanted to go. That’s the message I want to give to the kids.<\/p>\n
“Other kids and other men could look at my story and take it into their life and achieve anything.”<\/p>\n
As his older brother Jose thrived in the amateur ranks, plans were put in place for Benavidez to drop 100lb.<\/p>\n
By the time he was 15 he was sparring with pros such as multiple middleweight world champion Gennady Golovkin.<\/p>\n
“I had been boxing since I was three, with my dad training me,” recalled the Phoenix-born fighter.<\/p>\n
“I really believed in myself. When I got back into boxing aged 11, we started moving little by little and cutting the weight.<\/p>\n
“When I lost that first 100lb, I was at 260lb and I got down to 168lb. That’s when I knew I got the biggest part out of the way, and now let’s continue to train and see where it takes us.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t thinking about being a world champion, I just worked hard every single day. This is not a sprint. I like to think of it as a marathon.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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At the age of 12, David Benavidez weighed 18st 6lb (117kg). When the American steps into the ring on Saturday against Briton Anthony Yarde as the defending WBC light-heavyweight champion, he will be 12st 7lb (79kg). Now 28 and a two-weight world champion, images on social media of Benavidez as an overweight 13-year-old training with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}