By Allan Fox: A fight between WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis ‘Superman’ Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs) and former 2 division world champion Badou ‘The Ripper’ Jack (22-1-2, 13 KOs) is expected to be announced today by Showtime Boxing for New York. Promoter Yvon Michel is waiting on Showtime to make their announcement for the Stevenson vs. Jack fight.
”From the beginning, we asked all those involved not to comment and wait for a presentation [from Showtime], which we will see tomorrow [Wednesday],” said Michel to RDS.ca.
Earlier this week, there were rumors floating around that Stevenson-Jack was no longer taking place, and that Eleider Alvarez would be the next opponent for ‘Superman’ Adonis. Stevenson said this about the rumors: ”fake news.”
The World Boxing Council has already agreed to let Stevenson bypass his mandatory challenger Eleider Alvarez in order to face the 34-year-old Jack next. What’s shocking is the fact that Alvarez has been Stevenson’s WBC mandatory challenger since November 2015, and he still hasn’t gotten a title shot. Alvarez has said to have agreed to step aside in the past to let Stevenson fight other opponents. The WBC recently ordered a fight between #1 WBC Alvarez and #2 Oleksandr Gvozdyk for the interim WBC light heavyweight title. Alvarez opted not to take the fight. Gvozdyk will now be facing Medhi Amar on March 17 in New York.
It’s been 7 months since the 40-year-old Stevenson last defended his WBC 175 lb. title in defeating Andrzej Fonfara by a 2nd round knockout in their rematch on June 3 at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. That was Stevenson’s 8th successful title defense of his WBC title. Stevenson took a lot of heat for fighting Fonfara a second time, as he’d already beaten him soundly by a 12 round unanimous decision in May 2014. Fonfara wasn’t Stevenson’s mandatory challenger, so there was no real point in him facing the Polish fighter again. The boxing public wanted to see Stevenson take on arguably tougher opponents like Gvozdyk, Artur Beterbiev, Dmitry Bivol, Andre Ward, Badou Jack, Marcus Browne or Sergey Kovalev. Fighting Fonfara a second time made Stevenson look like he’s milking his WBC title by facing weak opposition instead of guys that have a chance of defeating him and ending his 5-year reign as the WBC light heavyweight champion.
Jack last fought in August of last year in defeating WBA World light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly by a 5th round knockout on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor event fight on Showtime pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jack vacated the WBA belt a month later on September 23 without defending it. Jack took criticism from boxing fans for giving up the WBA 175lb title, as many of them believe he wanted to duck having to face unbeaten knockout artist Dmitry Bivol. Had Jack kept the WBA title, he would have had to defend against Bivol, and that would have been a risky fight for him. Stevenson is also a risky fight for Jack, of course, but there’s more money to be made for him facing him than there would have been against a dangerous young guy like Bivol.