Benavidez Willing to Drop to 125

Joseph Benavidez, on “The Savage Dog Show,” discussing whether he will move to 125 pounds now that teammate Urijah Faber is also fighting at 135:

“Since that [first Dominick Cruz] loss, I was like, ‘Man, the guy was just bigger than me. These guys are stronger than me.’ I started a great strength and conditioning program and I’ve put on a lot of weight. Now I walk around about [150]. I still have the frame where I could go [to 125], but we’ll see what happens. If Urijah has the belt and there’s a 125-pound division, I would of course be the one to [drop] because I have the body frame for it. But right now the belt’s my main goal of course, to get back there, but timing couldn’t be better for Urijah to drop down [to 135]. If he had dropped down and we were both contenders, it [would have been] like who was going to get the belt first. Of course I wanted my shot at the belt. Now the fact that I’ve had it, I want the best for my teammates. … I’m not going to get to go for the belt anytime soon. I want him to go out there and hopefully become a world champion and then we’ll go from there. … If he keeps holding it, I’ll just keep fighting. Whenever he doesn’t have the belt, I’d love to challenge whoever’s there.”