Who Are Boxing’s Most Avoided Fighters in 2026?

by Michael Kovacs, ADMIN

Champions avoiding challengers has long been commonplace in the world of boxing. Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao festered for the better part of a decade before the two finally squared off. It was at least five years too late when ‘Money’ pot-shotted his way to a lopsided victory against an aging Pac-Man who lacked the explosiveness of years before. Gennady Golovkin knocked out everyone in his path for years, prompting Canelo Alvarez to wait for the Kazakh phenom to slow down a touch before agreeing to a fight. Having avoided fighters is nothing new.

In 2026, similar stories are unfolding. But which fighters in particular are being avoided like the plague? Let’s take a look. 

The Most Avoided Fighters in 2026

David Benavidez

A $150 million offer was made to Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez to defend his undisputed super middleweight championship against long-time interim champion and number-one contender David Benavidez. The then-champ inexplicably turned it down in cold blood. 

Benavidez has spent the better part of five years being the most dangerous man in whatever room Canelo Álvarez refuses to enter. At super middleweight, “The Monster” was the mandatory challenger Canelo’s DAZN-backed promotional machinery simply routed around—too powerful, too durable, too capable of turning a lucrative franchise into rubble on pay-per-view. So, Benavidez waited. And waited. And waited some more. All the while, Canelo opted to face lackluster names. such as Jaime Munguía, Edgar Berlanga, and William Scull. 

When it was announced that Canelo was campaigning for a fight against Terrence Crawford, a man two weight divisions below the super middleweight champion, Benavidez finally gave up. He moved up in weight to light heavyweight, duly outpointing both Oleksandr Gvozdyk and David Morrell to become the WBC and WBA (Regular) champion, and proved to the world exactly why Canelo wanted no part of him. 

Most recently, former champion Anthony Yarde was brutally stopped back in November, and still, the signature fight he deserves stays just out of reach. Dmitry Bivol vacated the WBC title in April 2025—the day before a scheduled purse bid for his mandatory defense against Benavidez—choosing to chase a Beterbiev trilogy instead of standing in front of the most avoided power puncher in the sport. That’s two supposed pound-for-pound superstars who have now avoided the Monster, forcing him to go up in weight even further. 

Now it’s March 2026, and Benavidez heads to cruiserweight for a detour against unified champion Gilberto Ramirez in two months’ time. And despite it being the Monster’s debut at the weight, online betting sites make him the favorite to emerge victorious. The latest Bovada boxing odds list Benavidez as a -370 frontrunner to get the job done, with the Mexican champion a +270 outsider. From there, the plan is simple: Bivol and Beterbiev, in that order. The only question is whether they’re willing to get in the ring with him. 

Agit Kabayel

Agit Kabayel has been watching Oleksandr Usyk publicly lay out his final three fights—Rico Verhoeven, the Dubois-Wardley winner, a Fury trilogy—and he’s conspicuously, almost insultingly absent from the list. The WBC interim heavyweight champion—a man who stopped feared puncher Zhilei Zhang in six rounds in February 2025, then put Damian Knyba away in three in January—has been ghosted so thoroughly he took his grievances to the German press. “How can he not name the number one-ranked opponent, his mandatory challenger?” Kabayel told RTL in March 2026 that his long-standing respect for Usyk visibly curdled into something darker. 

Here’s the chess match behind the curtain: Usyk’s promotional arrangement gives his camp latitude to construct a “voluntary defense” window before addressing mandatories—standard practice, weaponized strategically. Verhoeven, the crossover MMA/kickboxing name, is a strange one, as not many folks outside of hardcore fans have ever heard of the Dutchman. Deontay Wilder was reportedly being considered before that, a decision that would have been even more insulting, given that the American knockout artist has lost four of his last six fights, three of them by knockout. 

The WBC’s February 2026 mandate—Usyk fights Kabayel after the voluntary defense or surrenders the WBC belt—gave the interim champion real leverage for the first time. WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said it plainly to Chris Mannix: the voluntary was approved because Kabayel had a scheduled fight in January, but now the mandatory is next. Full stop. Whether the WBC actually follows through if Usyk’s camp engineers another detour is another question entirely. 

Jaron “Boots” Ennis

Jaron “Boots” Ennis demolished Uisma Lima in round one to add the WBA interim super-welterweight title to his IBF welterweight strap and stared down a division he’d already cleaned out. His average fight lasts 3.6 rounds. His KO rate sits at 89%. He stood in Vergil Ortiz Jr.’s hometown crowd and called him out to his face. And the fight is still not made.

The Ortiz saga has graduated from promotional headache to downright farce. In January 2026, Ortiz’s team terminated his Golden Boy promotional contract, citing the expiration of their DAZN broadcast deal. Golden Boy responded by blocking Ortiz from signing any third-party agreement tied to an Ennis fight. 

Eddie Hearn confirmed in January that his man signed the deal; Ortiz didn’t. Two unbeaten welterweights, one fight boxing needs, held hostage by a contract dispute and those pesky boxing politics that always seem to scupper big fights. 

The backup option is Xander Zayas—fine enough for a stay-busy fight, insufficient for a fighter of Ennis’s standing. Bakhram Murtazaliev and Sebastian Fundora represent the genuine 154-pound unification fights. Hearn has publicly predicted that Ennis will claim the P4P No. 1 spot by year’s end—bold, but not absurd when you examine the destruction rate. The problem now is actually landing a marquee fight, rather than a sacrificial lamb.