Badou Jack says he’s not ducking Dmitry Bivol

By Boxing News - 09/25/2017 - Comments

Image: Badou Jack says he’s not ducking Dmitry Bivol

By Jim Dower: Badou Jack (22-1-2, 13 KOs) says he didn’t vacate his WBA World light heavyweight title to duck an ordered fight against interim WBA champion Dmitry Bivol (11-0, 9 KOs). According to Jack, part of the agreement he signed for his fight against Nathan Cleverly on August 26 was that he would vacate the WBA 175 lb. title so they could get up another bigger fight than that.

You can’t blame Jack if he did duck the fight with Bivol, because it’s a bad one on paper. Bivol is younger, stronger and he has less miles on him than Jack. It’s a fight that Jack could easily have lost. You have to remember that Jack struggled against James DeGale and Lucian Bute.

You can say that Jack deserved wins in both of those fights, but the fact of the matter is they were very hard fights for him. Those were grueling affairs for Jack and he was lucky not to get a loss against those guys.

“They’re working on something big, so I just got to stay patient,” Jack said to ESPN.com. “It was part of the agreement for us even getting the fight with Cleverly that we had to vacate it after we won. I’m not ducking a guy who has 11 fights. Look at the guys I have fought. My promoter is looking for bigger and better things for me,” Jack said.

The big fight that Badou Jack wants is against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs). What’s unclear is whether Jack’s promoters at Mayweather Promotions can make that fight with the 40-year-old Stevenson right away. Jack says he’s going to be fighting in December or in first part of 2018. At least Jack has fought twice in 2017. It would be a bad deal if he was only given one fight in 2017, and forced to wait until 2018 for the Stevenson fight or whatever fight that Mayweather Promotions has for him.

Jack also wants a fight against former light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev, whose career is reeling right now following back to back losses to Andre “SOG” Ward. If that’s the so called big fight for Jack, then it’s disappointing. Kovalev’s career is not looking too good right now. Adonis Stevenson is the much bigger fight for Jack. It’s a tough one for him to win though, as Stevenson is a lot faster and more powerful than Jack.

Stevenson has a commitment to defend his WBC title against his mandatory Eleider Alvarez. Jack may need to wait until 2018 for him to get the Stevenson fight unless the World Boxing Council lets Stevenson bypass the Alvarez fight. That wouldn’t be surprising, because it’s been years since Stevenson last defended against his mandatory challenger. I believe that last time Stevenson defended against his mandatory challenger was in 2013 when he fought Tony Bellew. 4 years ago. That sounds about right.

Bivol will be fighting Trent Broadhurst for Jack’s WBA light heavyweight title on November 4.