Kovalev-Stevenson talks are dead for June fight

By Boxing News - 01/28/2016 - Comments

press conference-0013 - Adonis Stevenson - CBSBy Dan Ambrose: The negotiations between the promoters for WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson and IBF/WBA/WBO 175lb champion Sergey Kovalev has failed to produce a fight for the summer, according to Dan Rafael.

Apparently, there was disagreement over who would televise the fight – HBO or Showtime. Stevenson fights on Showtime whereas Kovalev is under contract to fight on HBO. Since this isn’t a fight on the same level as the Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao from last year, ironing out the deal hit a wall.

Kovalev has a fight this Saturday night against former WBC 175lb champion Jean Pascal at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Perhaps if Kovalev wins in a sensational manner, it will help create more interest in a unification fight between Kovalev and Stevenson.

“Ultimately, Stevenson-Kovalev died because they couldn’t agree on who would do PPV — HBO or combined HBO/Showtime (which was absurd),” Rafael said on his Twitter.

Kovalev has been looking to get a unification fight against Stevenson for a couple of years now, and he’s just had no luck in accomplishing that. There was a chance in the past when Stevenson was fighting on HBO like Kovalev, but when he moved to Showtime a year ago, it made a fight between them all but impossible. As we see now, it’s extremely difficult to put a fight together between these two hard hitting knockout artists.

The 38-year-old Stevenson has time working against him because he’s not going to be able to continue to fight at the same level as he’s been for too much longer. He’ll likely continue to have good hand speed and punching power for a long time to come, but his stamina could start taking a hit as he ages and we could start seeing injuries pop up that slow him down and prevent him from fighting frequently. Since he won the WBC title in 2013 with a 1st round knockout win over Chad Dawson, Stevenson has defended his title six times in beating Tony Bellew, Tavoris Cloud, Andrzej Fonfara, Dmitry Sukhotsky, Sakio Bika and Tommy Karpency. Stevenson hasn’t faced any dangerous opponents like Jean Pascal or Artur Beterbiev.

With the fight against Stevenson now dead, Kovalev will need to look for another fight against someone else in the division to get him ready for a fight against Ward. Beterbiev would be perfect if he’s willing to take the fight. Fonfara or Eleider Alvarez would be great too. However, Alvarez will likely look to get a title shot against Stevenson because he’s the #1 WBC contender for him right now.

Fonfara would be a great opponent for Kovalev, and it would be a good test for him to see how he does against a guy that gave Stevenson a great deal of problems in their fight in May 2014. Stevenson was knocked down by Fonfara, but he got up and was able to dominate him the rest of the way. If Kovalev could KO Fonfara for the first time, it would be a big deal.



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