A faster, sharper, smarter Benavidez gave Gilberto Ramirez precisely the type of lesson he promised he’d teach his former sparring partner in their fight to win the WBA and WBO cruiserweight titles at T-Mobile Arena.

Benavidez’s hand speed and combination punching troubled the bigger but much slower Ramirez, led to a knockdown apiece in the fourth and sixth rounds and resulted in a dominant, sixth-round knockout win in his cruiserweight debut.

With his right eye essentially swollen shut, Ramirez declined to get up before referee Thomas Taylor counted to 10 with one second to go. It was Mexico’s Ramirez (48-2, 30 KOs) first knockout defeat in his 16-year career to a fighter ranked No. 7 on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to outpower him because [it was] my first time coming up to 200 [pounds],” Benavidez told Jim Gray during his post-fight interview. “So I knew I had to use the gifts that God gave me – speed, power, movement, punch selection and IQ. And that’s exactly what I did.”

Benavidez (32-0, 26 KOs), a 29-year-old Phoenix native who moved up 25 pounds, became champion in a third weight class. The two-time WBC super middleweight champ still holds the WBC light heavyweight title and intends to drop back down to 175 pounds for his next fight, preferably a shot at Ring/IBF/WBA/WBO champ Dmitry Bivol.

Ramirez, 34, lost the titles the southpaw won from Armenia’s Arsen Goulamirian (WBA) and England’s Chris Billam-Smith (WBO) by winning back-to-back unanimous decisions in 2024.

“I just wanted to give him thanks for the opportunity,” Benavidez said. “I love ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez. We came up together. We came up sparring together. I got him ready for his world championship fights. He got me ready for my world championship fights. So I’m kind of sad it had to happen like this. I love ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez, but it is what it is in here. There’s only one ‘Monstruo.’”

Ramirez landed several punches during the sixth, but Benavidez conserved energy that enabled him to hammer him with a damaging barrage of punches that made the former champion take a second knee and ended their scheduled 12-round fight.

CompuBox credited Benavidez for landing a staggering 25 of 43 power punches during the sixth and 137 of 241 power shots overall (57 percent).

Ramirez recovered well enough after a knockdown late in the fourth round to remain on his feet in the fifth that Benavidez definitively won.

Benavidez blasted Ramirez with an array of rights and lefts during a fantastic fourth and wobbled him with a right hand. The challenger tried to finish Ramirez with a flurry of shots that eventually made him drop to one knee with five seconds on the clock.

Ramirez reached his feet quickly before the bell sounded. A ringside physician took a close look at him before allowing the fifth to begin.

A left hook by Benavidez with 20 seconds to go in the second round energized the crowd. Benavidez’s five-punch combination stopped Ramirez from throwing punches.

Benavidez’s speed advantage became almost immediately apparent.

Ramirez was slow to react to a right hand that moved him backward with just under a minute to go in the opening round. Benavidez also unloaded almost 10 punches in combination before Ramirez could throw a single shot in return.

Five rounds later, Benavidez proved what he predicted throughout the buildup toward their pay-per-view main event.

“I knew that the combinations was going to be able to land easy,” he said. “You know, my combinations, my punch selection is unlike anything else. … Whoever it is, man, I don’t care who it is – nobody can f*** with me.”