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Adonis Stevenson holds the WBC light heavyweight title and is recognized by The RING Magazine as the world champion at 175 pounds, but he's lost a lot of momentum with a quiet 2014 that has been more memorable for his failure to make a fight with Sergey Kovalev or Bernard Hopkins than it has been for anything he's done in the ring.
Stevenson (24-1, 20 KO) will face fringe contender Dmitry Sukhotsky (22-2, 16 KO) on December 19 in Quebec City, with Showtime televising the bout. They also aired his only other fight this year, a tough win over Andrzej Fonfara on May 24. Stevenson signed with Al Haymon and took his fights to Showtime after building his name on HBO with wins over Chad Dawson, Tavoris Cloud, and Tony Bellew in 2013.
Stevenson and Kovalev were talking earlier this year about a potential unification fight, but when Stevenson jumped to Haymon and Showtime, it was thought that Bernard Hopkins would be the big money target. Instead, Hopkins took himself back to HBO for a fight with Kovalev, leaving Stevenson somewhat out in the cold.
And now that Kovalev and Jean Pascal are apparently considering a fight with one another, Stevenson may be losing out on his next potential fight, too. The Fight Network's Corey Erdman spoke with Stevenson this week:
On a fight with Jean Pascal and the purse split: "I think the WBC allows 30%. And that's a lot for him, because in three years he hasn't fought a top 10 opponent at 175. So that's 30% he can have. That's it."
On Stevenson vs Kovalev: "The world needs this fight. It won't be watched only in Quebec City, we'd be watched all over the world. You see Bute and Pascal, they fight together, but the world's not interested. They don't sell a lot on TV because people don't want to watch that fight. The world needs Adonis and Kovalev."
On people who say he's ducked Kovalev: "They don't know nothing about boxing. I can say, Kovalev can say we wanna fight. You have to deal with TV, you have to deal with the managers, you have to deal with the promoters. But I know Al Haymon, my manager, is going to work on that. Kathy Duva is (Kovalev's) promoter. She has to make contact with the promoter and the manager and the TV. That's the problem. They have to fix it. The TV, they have to fix it."