By Allan Fox: In response to 49-year-old IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (54-6-2, 32 KO’s) making a big deal about supposedly being in his head mentally after having me met with Adonis Stevenson (23-1, 20 KO’s) on stage for a meaningless stare down, Stevenson came out today and said he’s totally unafraid of Hopkins and he doesn’t see anything in the aging fighter to be afraid of.

Hopkins has a unification fight coming up next month against WBA light heavyweight champion Beibut Shumenov (14-1, 9 KO’s) on April 19th. DC Armory, Washington, District of Columbia, USA. After that fight, though, Hopkins could be facing either Stevenson in a unification bout or WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev.

Hopkins appears to be trying to increase interest in his fight with Shumenov by hinting that he could be facing Stevenson after that. That’s an old trick fighters use to drive up interest in their fights by talking about another fight that could come directly after that one. Unfortunately for Hopkins, fans aren’t too interested in a fight between him and Shumenov so far.

Shumenov hasn’t been fighting on a regular basis lately, and he’s failed to take on the really good opposition since he captured the WBA title four years ago in beating Gabriel Campillo. In four years, Shumenov has defended his title five times against Vyacheslav Uzelkov, William Joppy, Danny Santiago, Enrique Ornelas and Tamas Kovacs. Those have been safe fights for Shumenov.

“I was really surprised that he [Hopkins] would put it that way, that he was in my head like that,” Stevenson said to RingTV. “I’m not intimidated by anybody. Nobody is scared of Hopkins.”

It’ll be very surprising if Hopkins chooses to fight either Stevenson or Kovalev, because those guys are solid fighters and it’s been years since Hopkins fought a good opponent in Jean Pascal. Even then, Hopkins had a flawed fighter in front of him in that fight. Stevenson and Kovalev are clearly better than Pascal, and it’s hard to imagine Hopkins doing well against either of them.

Stevenson will be defending his WBC title on May 24th against Andrzej Fonfara (25-2, 15 KO’s) at the Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.