WBC orders negotiations between Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev

By Boxing News - 03/26/2015 - Comments

kovalev3454By Dan Ambrose: Earlier on Thursday the World Boxing Council ordered IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) and WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (25-1, 21 KOs) to begin negotiations between them.

If they’re unable to negotiate a fight, then there’s a purse bid that will take place on April 17th. Stevenson still has a fight on April 4th against Sakio Bika (32-6-3, 21 KOs) Pepsi Coliseum, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

There’s no telling what will happen in that fight, because it’s by far the toughest fight that Stevenson has had in his career. He’s not really faced any quality fighters other than Chad Dawson, who was a shell of himself by the time he faced Stevenson.

Bika could very well knock Stevenson out if he can land enough shots. We saw Stevenson get knocked out already by Darnell Boone in 2010, and Bika arguably hits harder than Boone.

Last December, the WBC voted to have the WBC champion Stevenson face Kovalev in a unification match. In the same month, Stevenson easily defeated a badly over-matched Dmitry Sukhotsky by a 5th round stoppage. The fight was such a mismatch that it was boring to watch even though it ended in a stoppage.

Sadly, this has been the case with pretty much all of Stevenson’s fights since he picked up the WBC title with a win over Dawson in 2013. Stevenson has had easy fights against badly over-matched opponents like Tavoris Cloud, Sukhotsky, Tony Bellew, and Andrzej Fonfara. There hasn’t been any risk taking title defenses for Stevenson.

It’s unfortunate that the WBC felt that they needed to order the Kovalev-Stevenson fight, but they obviously felt that they needed to nudge Stevenson to take the fight.

Stevenson recently moved from HBO to Showtime, which gave him a break from having to fight Kovalev. But the only way Stevenson can get out of the fight now is if he vacates his WBC title, which he apparently isn’t going to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsew6sWQDiU

If Stevenson does vacate the title, he won’t have anywhere to go unless he wants to move back down to 168. Kovalev holds the IBF, WBA and WBO light heavyweight titles. Stevenson can’t find an easy mark to pick up a title in order to bypass the WBC’s plan for him to take the Kovalev fight.

The only way to avoid the fight is by vacating the title. I don’t know why Stevenson would attempt to avoid it, because he’ll get good payday and it’ll help his career even if he gets beaten.

Kovalev is coming off of an 8th round stoppage win over Jean Pascal this month. Unlike Stevenson’s title defenses, it was an exciting fight with Kovalev and Pascal trading huge bombs. In the end, Kovalev scored a stoppage in the 8th round after hurting Pascal with some big shots that had him out on his feet.

If Stevenson loses to Bika, then that’ll set up a situation where Kovalev and Bika will need to face each other. It’s obviously not as interesting a fight as the Stevenson-Kovalev fight, but what can you do?



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