By Scott Gilfoid: Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (19-1, 16 KO’s) will be fighting for the IBF 168 pound title in his next bout with or without the current IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch, according to fightnews.com. Stevenson’s promoter Yvon Michel told Fightnews “It will be against Froch or whoever else if the title is vacant.”

What this means is that Stevenson isn’t going to step aside to let Froch fight former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute or whoever else Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn can dig up for Froch to fight instead of his mandatory challenger Stevenson. The International Boxing Federation already ordered that Froch has to fight Stevenson next, so that puts him in a bind to where he either agrees to fight Stevenson and risk losing out on his big money rematches that he’s been dreaming of against Bute, Mikkel Kessler and Andre Ward, or he chooses the easy way out and vacates his IBF strap.

I mean it’s not going to look at all good if Froch is seen vacating his IBF strap when faced with a dangerous puncher like Stevenson. If this was an arguably lesser threat like Edwin Rodriguez, the fallout of Froch vacating his title might not be so bad. But with a blazing fast knockout artist like Stevenson bearing down on him, it might given the general impression that Froch is ducking Stevenson.

Michel doesn’t see Froch getting the exception to bypass his oblication to fight Stevenson his mandatory. We’ll see about that, because I’m sure that Hearn is going to try and skip the Stevenson fight unless Bute decides he’s still not ready to fight Froch. In that case Froch and Hearn won’t have anymore excuses not to fight Stevenson. It would be academic at that point that Stevenson would be the guy for Froch to fight.

Stevenson looked great in dispatching contender Don George in a 12th round TKO last October in their IBF 168 pound elimination bout.

Froch is coming off of a 3rd round KO win over light heavyweight Yusaf Mack last Saturday night.