By Allan Fox: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs) WON’T be fighting his mandatory challenger Eleider “Storm” Alvarez (23-0, 11 KOs) in 2017. The fight is being pushed to 2018 on January 20 or 27th, according to Michael Benson.
The 40-year-old Stevenson won’t be fighting former 2 division world champion Badou Jack next unfortunately for boxing fans. That’s probably not good news for Jack, as he recently vacated his WBA light heavyweight title when he was ordered by the World Boxing Association to defend his belt against interim WBA 175 lb. champion Dmitry Bivol (11-0, 9 KOs). A fight between Stevenson and Jack will likely take place at some point, but it looks like it won’t be until after Stevenson defends against the 33-year-old Alvarez first.
With Stevenson not fighting until January of 2018, it means he’s only fighting once in 2017. That’s not good for a 40-year-old fighter, who may not have too much left of his prime of his career. When you get up there in age like Stevenson, you want to stay as possible and fight at least 2 times a year instead of just once. The only thing Stevenson has to show for himself I 2017 is his 2nd round knockout win over Andrzej Fonfara on June 3 in Montreal, Canada.
Stevenson-Fonfara was a needless rematch between them, considering that Stevenson had already easily beaten Fonfara by a 12 round unanimous decision 3 years ago on May 24, 2014 in winning by the scores 116-109, 115-110 and 115-110. A rematch would have made sense if the outcome was controversial like the 12 round draw between Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. That’s a fight where a rematch makes sense. But for Stevenson to face Fonfara a second time, it was a huge waste of time.
Fonfara had recently been knocked out in the 1st round by Joe Smith Jr. on June 18 in 2016. And while Fonfara did win his last fight before the Stevenson match against had Dawson, it wasn’t an impressive performance and it was against a guy that is no longer a major player in the light heavyweight division at this point.
Eleider Alvarez has been waiting for his title shot against Stevenson for quite some time, but it looks like he’s going to need to wait another 3 more months for January. Alvarez recently beat Jean Pascal and Lucian Bute in his last 2 fights. He looked good against Bute, but he struggled with Pascal. That’s the way Alvarez is though. He can look good one fight but then fall apart and have to battle tooth and nail in his next.
Alvarez isn’t the type of talent that wins fights easily unless he’s facing someone that has a chin problem. It’s lucky for Alvarez that he doesn’t have to fight someone good to earn a title shot against Stevenson, because he might lose. If Alvarez had to fight Artur Beterbiev, Sullivan Barrera, Dmitry Bivol or Oleksandr Gvozdyk, he could very well get beaten. Alvarez is a good fighter, but he would be at great risk of losing all of those guys.