By Allan Fox: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (21-1, 18 KO’s) met with HBO recently to discuss his next fight, which the network will likely be televising depending on the opponent picked out. According to Dan Rafael, former IBF light heavyweight champion Tavoris Cloud (24-1, 19 KO’s) was mentioned as a possible opponent for Stevenson’s first defense.
However, the 35-year-old Stevenson still prefers to face IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins rather than fighting Cloud. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
Hopkins could end up defending his IBF title against Karo Murat, who the International Boxing Federation recently reinstated as Hopkins’ mandatory challenger after briefly removing Murat from that position when he was experiencing visa problems.
Stevenson may have to take the fight with Cloud if that’s something that HBO wants and there’s no option of getting fights against Andre Ward and Hopkins. When you take those fighters out of the equation, there’s really not a lot of appealing options for Stevenson to fight at 175.
He’s probably not going to get a fight against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly nor WBA champ Beibut Shumenov. Once you get past those names then it comes down to Stevenson facing his mandatory challenger Tony Bellew or Jean Pascal.
Bellew isn’t well known in Canada or the United States, so there’s point in taking that fight until Stevenson absolutely has to in order to keep the WBC title. Pascal is a huge fight for Stevenson and that’s one that his promoter needs to be working on trying to put together because it’s a much better fight than Stevenson vs. Cloud or Bellew.
It might not be as big as Stevenson vs. Hopkis but it is probably really close to being tht big of a fight.
Stevenson stopped Chad Dawson in the 1st round earlier this month on June 8th in Montreal, Canada.
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