By Jim Dower: 35-year-old former WBA 175 pound champion Gabriel Campillo (24-6-1, 11 KOs) is a possibility for WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson’s next title defense on September 27th at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada, according to RingTV.
Campillo is coming off of a big win over previously unbeaten contender Thomas Williams Jr last Friday night. Campillo was able to take some monstrous shots from Williams Jr in the first 4 rounds to get a cut stoppage in the 5th.
Williams Jr, besides being cut, looked really tired and in distress at being stalked around the ring by Campillo instead of it being the other way around.
Stevenson is supposed to be defending his title against #1 WBC Jean Pascal, but Stevenson wants to get another title defense in before facing Pascal. If Stevenson wins that fight, then he wants to go after the winner of the November 8th Sergey Kovalev vs. Bernard Hopkins fight.
Stevenson could have had a unification match against Kovalev, but after he signed with Al Haymon, he took him over to Showtime and that made a fight between him and Kovalev impossible. It’s unclear what will change in that area if Stevenson beats Campillo and Pascal. He’s still run into the HBO vs. Showtime thing that would get in the way of him fighting Kovalev, if he’s the one that emerges victorious in his fight against Hopkins.
Stevenson, 36, showed his age in his last fight in having to work hard to beat Andrzej Fonfara by a 12 round decision last May at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Fonfara took a lot of punishment but was able to knock Stevenson down and punish him with hard shots. Fonfara didn’t have the punch to knock Stevenson out like Darnell Boone had done in 2010 in stopping him in the 2nd round, but he definitely showed that Stevenson can dish it out but can’t take it.
Stevenson hasn’t faced a really good opponent yet since he captured the WBC title in beating Chad Dawson. Campillo is kind of up there in age and he was already stopped by Fonfara last year in September.
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