Adonis Stevenson must fight Sergey Kovalev on HBO

By Boxing News - 02/13/2016 - Comments

kovalev (9)By Allan Fox: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (27-1, 22 KOs) has no position to bargain with IBF/WBA/WBO 175lb unified champion Sergey Kovalev (29-0-1, 26 KOs) for a unification fight between them.

While the soon to be 39-year-old Stevenson wants to negotiate a fight with Kovalev with it being shared by both HBO and Showtime, Kovalev’s promoter Kathy Duva has made it crystal clear that the fight must take place exclusively on HBO or not all.

Stevenson doesn’t have the titles in his possession, and he’s not the A-side in the negotiations. According to Duva, Stevenson is an aging fighter who will be turning 40-years-old in 2017. That’s ripe for a fighter, and she’s not sure if Stevenson will still be a world champion by then.

Duva sees Stevenson’s request to have the Kovalev fight televised on both networks as an excuse not to take the fight, because there’s no way they’re going to let the fight can be televised on both networks. It’s not a big enough fight to be televised on HBO and Showtime on the same night.

If it were a mega-fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, then it would make sense to have the fight televised by both networks. But there’s not going to be enough fan interest in the Kovalev-Stevenson fight to supply huge ratings for both cable companies. You split the audience and it means you split the ratings, and it’s not worth it in my view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ49bdamW4U

Amir Khan is a proof that a Showtime fighter can fight on HBO. He’s facing WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on HBO PPV on May 7. If a Showtime fighter like Khan can fight on HBO, then it means Stevenson can do it too, according to Duva.

Duva says the Kovalev-Stevenson fight is not going to happen unless Stevenson agrees to the fight being televised on HBO. Since it doesn’t look like he’s going to do that, then he needs to forget about the fight and move on. Duva thinks that Stevenson is just name dropping Kovalev’s name to get attention to himself without any true interest in facing Kovalev.
Kovalev thinks that Stevenson is plain scared of him, which is why he calls him “Chickenson.”

Duva thinks that Stevenson’s manager Al Haymon will make sure that when he does eventually get beaten, it will be by one of the fighters that he has control over so that the WBC 175lb title stays in house rather than going out to a fighter that isn’t controlled by him.
Duva sees it as too late for a fight between Kovalev and Stevenson to take place by this summer.

Kovalev has an important fight against former WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward in late 2016, provided that he wins his March 26 fight against unbeaten Sullivan Barrera, and Kovalev wins his interim fight against an opponent still to be determined. A promotion for a fight between Kovalev and Stevenson would take many months to make happen, and the negotiations would likely be long and protracted. This is why there’s simply not enough time to make the fight happen how.



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