By Jason Kim: The World Boxing Council named super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler WBC “Champion emeritus” on Monday, meaning that he no longer is the WBC super middleweight champion but that he can challenge for the title as soon as his injured eye heals. Kessler dropped out of the Super Six tournament recently because of a problem affecting the muscles of his left eye. The doctors have advised him to stay away from fighting for nine months, and presumably the condition should be healed by then.

At that point, Kessler should be able to challenge the winner of the Super Six tournament. In the mean time, his former WBC title will be fought over by Andre Ward and Andre Dirrell in their semifinal Super Six tourney bout, which no one knows when it will take place. In boxing news from Dan Rafael of ESPN, he reports that both Dirrell and Ward’s promoters have been served legal letters by Showtime, letting them know that they expect the Dirrell-Ward fight to be taking place in the near future.

If they fail to make the fight happen, they can be found in breach of contract and Showtime could then sue. Dirrell’s promoter Gary Shaw says “I don’t know, but as far as I know the fight will go off. I don’t know what date. And I do know that Goosen [Ward’s promoter] and me have been put on notice [talking about from Showtime] that the fight has to go on or we would be in breach.” This fight has to happen otherwise the entire Super Six tourney will sink into the dust and be finished.

You have to wonder whether Kessler will be able to have a tune-up fight before taking on the winner of the Super Six in nine months. It wouldn’t be good for him to go from a long rest of no fights against a battle sharpened Super Six winner. I can’t see that turning out well for Kessler. I think Kessler would be better off declining that fight and going after easier opponents until he’s sure that his eye can hold up from a serious pounding.

As for Green, there’s still no official word about what’s going to happen with him. He’s supposed to be given a fight outside of the Super Six tourney by Showtime to make up for him losing out and being eliminated from the tourney due to Kessler dropping out. It would be nice if Green could stay in the Super Six tournament but that’s probably not an option at this point.