Where The Hell Is Adonis Stevenson?

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By Ian “The Boxing Historian” Murphy

With the much anticipated match up between current recognized Light Heavyweight Champion Sergey Kovalev and former undisputed 168lb champion Andre Ward finally set for this November, one begs to ask this question: where the hell is Adonis Stevenson? Where is the man who holds the WBC portion of the 175lb title? Where is the guy with the huge left hand who iced Chad Dawson for the title and was awarded Ring Magazine KO of the year? Where is the dynamic southpaw who took out current WBC Cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew? I’ll tell you where he is. He’s closing in on his 39th birthday and looking at the best part of his career in the rearview mirror. As of the end of 2014, he’s averaging two fights per year against decent but hardly world class competition. Tommy Karpency and Sakio Bika are solid fighters, but they aren’t who the boxing world wants to see fight Adonis Stevenson. They want to see him unify the division in a mega fight with Sergey Kovalev.

One would think that being on the back nine of his career, Stevenson would want to cash in as much as he could against top opponents. In truth, the opposite has been true. While Kovalev is fighting former champions like Jean Pascal and undefeated megastars like Andre Ward, Stevenson is defending his 175lb crown against…Thomas Williams, JR? This is the next title defense for Stevenson as mandated by the WBC, and this event is to take place on July 29th in his first (and likely only) fight of 2016. Williams has a good record of 20-1 (who doesn’t these days?), and a high (#3) ranking, but this can be manipulated on the whims of a given sanctioning body. Williams is a solid fighter, and I doubt we’d have any issue with Stevenson defending against him if there was any indication that a unification fight with the winner of Kovalev/Ward was in the near future. However, this does not seem to be a likely scenario.

As far as can be seen, there are not any immediate plans for Stevenson to fight the winner of Kovalev/Ward. It has gotten to the point to where Kovalev refers to Stevenson as “Adonis Chickenson”, insinuating that the WBC trampion (not a type-o!) is indeed afraid of the tough Russian. It cannot be said for sure that this is the case, but the longer Stevenson takes the easy road that leads away from Kovalev, the more likely we are all going to think that he is deliberately avoiding him. I don’t blame Adonis, as the “Krusher” truly lives up to his nickname. As a result, it appears as if we may have a “Canelo situation” at Light Heavyweight now. The question that now remains is if Kovalev defeats Andre Ward in November, will Stevenson pull a “Canelo” and vacate his belt? This scenario smells an awful lot like what Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did recently when he beat Amir Khan and sought to avoid Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Alvarez vacated his WBC title to take easier fights. Another question: what’s up with these cats running from the former Soviet Bloc fighters?

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