By Allan Fox: Whether WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (24-1, 20 KOs) wants to fight IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) or not, he’s going to find himself forced to face the winner of the March 14th fight between Kovalev and former WBC 175lb champion Jean Pascal (29-2-1, 17 KOs).
The World Boxing Council has agreed to a proposal from Kovalev’s promoters for the winner of the Kovalev-Pascal fight to become the WBC mandatory challenger. If Stevenson gets past Dmitry Sukhotsky (22-2, 16 KOs) tonight in their fight in Quebec, Stevenson will be looking at facing either Kovalev or Pascal in 2015.
If Stevenson and the Kovalev-Pascal winner are unable to agree to a deal for the fight, then there will be a purse bid.
This is obviously good news for Kovalev, because he’s wanted a fight against Stevenson since earlier this year. He thought he had a deal to fight him, but then Stevenson moved over to Showtime and that erased any chances of a unification fight between them. There are a lot of boxing fans who feel that Stevenson made this move in order to duck what would have been a tough fight against Kovalev.
Kovalev recently beat IBF/WBA champ Bernard Hopkins by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision last November to take his two titles. Kovalev now has three of the four world titles at 175, and the only belt that is not in his possession is Stevenson’s WBC title. With a fight against Stevenson, Kovalev potentially will have the last remaining title not in his possession.
It’s unclear whether Kovalev would get a chance at fighting Stevenson for his WBC title without this move by the WBC, because there’s been more talk than action from Stevenson lately and it’s possible that he would never choose to mix it up with the hard hitting Kovalev. If you look at the guys that Stevenson has chosen to face lately, it appears that he’s looking to play it safe rather than take on real challenges.
Kovalev will have a tough test on his hands in trying to get past Pascal next March, and it’s quite possible Kovalev could lose that fight if he’s unable to deal with Pascal’s hand speed and likely movement. However, if Kovalev does blow Pascal out of the water then you’d have to give Kovalev an excellent chance of beating Stevenson when the time comes for the two of them to face each other.
Comments are closed.