A Closer Look at Some Fantastic Matchups in the Hot Light Heavyweight Division!

By Bradley “The Bulldog” Johnson

On March 3rd 2018 across town from the heavyweight championship fight with Deontay Wilder and Luis “King Kong” Ortiz, is a light heavyweight showdown that is taking place in Madison Square Garden on HBO.

This is just what the light heavyweight division needs in my opinion. With Andre Ward out of the picture there are several tough competitive fighters looking to secure the #1 spot in the division. The next couple months is kind of an unofficial Super Six type of tournament. Maybe it should be a super 10 tournament though.

We start off with Dmitry Bivol, 12-0, 10 KO’s Vs Sullivan Barrera, 21-1, 14 KO’s. This is the undercard for Sergey Kovalev, 31-2-1, 27 KO’s Vs Igor Mikhalkin, 21-1, 9 KO’s. All of these boxers are ranked in the top 12 as light heavyweights, according to BoxRec. (#12 vs. #4, and #2 vs. #11) Respectively. This looks like it is a likely setup of the winners of these two fights to face each other at a future date.

The other good news is we have Adonis Stevenson facing Badou Jack on May 19th in Montreal, Canada. Stevenson holds the WBC strap while Kovalev holds the WBO, and Bivol the WBA. Now if we can add IBF champion Artur Beterbiev, 12-0, 12 KO’s to the mix in the near future we will be one step closer to a unification match up. Right there are 7 of 10 top light heavyweights. I think we need to add Oleksandr Gvozdyk, 14-0, 11 KO’, Eleider Alvarez, 23-0, KO’s, and Marcus Browne, 21-0 to this mix and then we are on the way to figure out which one is the #1 light heavyweight in the world.

Well, that is the extended road at least. As of what is set up for March 3rd that would be fights for the WBO and WBA belts, with the setup of potential winners fighting and owning both belts. Then we have the winner of Adonis and Badou hopefully fighting belt holder Beterbiev or the ultimate survivor out of the four on the March 3rd card.

It looks like we may still have a year or more to go for the hopes of unifying the belts, but the three fights that are planned and signed already, are the most hope we’ve had in unifying the belts in a while. With Adonis Stevenson at 40 years old and now willing to take a risk and fight Jack, we are seeing a willingness through the division to have the best fight the best and see if a king of the hill will emerge, and it starts on March 3rd, 2018 in the Mecca of Boxing.

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