Sources at HBO confirmed to Yahoo Sports on Tuesday that the premium cable network opted not to renegotiate its deal with WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, freeing Stevenson to fight Andrzej Fonfara on Showtime on May 24.
A Showtime spokesman declined to comment on whether it will carry the fight, but it’s all but a certainty that it will.
Showtime has IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins facing WBA champion Beibut Shumenov on April 19 in Washington, D.C. If Hopkins beats Shumenov in that bout, Showtime would likely then pit him with Stevenson. Hopkins told Yahoo Sports last year that he had great interest in facing Stevenson.
The big news out of all this is that it appears to make a fight between Stevenson and WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev much more unlikely to occur. That has the potential to be one of the great fights of the year and is one of the most anticipated matches that could be made in the sport.
Now, however, it seems like it may be moving down the path that the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight has been on for the last four-plus years.
The story, of course, spins depending upon whom you speak with about it. Sources at HBO said the network reached a deal with Stevenson earlier this year to carry his fight with Fonfara with an eye toward a fall unification match with the power-punching Kovalev.
But according to this source, when Stevenson hired Al Haymon to manage him earlier this year, Haymon wanted to renegotiate the deal. Haymon does not speak to the media, but you can bet that Haymon does not believe there was a finalized deal with HBO. The source insisted to Yahoo Sports that it had a valid deal with Haymon and that Haymon insisted upon significantly more money.
Given that, HBO declined.
Stevenson fought three times on HBO in 2013 and seemed to be one of the network’s cornerstones in its rebuilding effort after it lost Mayweather last year to Showtime.
HBO has Kovalev under contact. Kovalev fights Cedric Agnew on Saturday in Atlantic City and would be open to facing Stevenson in the fall. HBO could still bid on that, but if Showtime does televise the Stevenson-Fonfara fight, Showtime would have the right of last refusal and could match any offer HBO makes to Stevenson.
That would thus make it unlikely that there is a Stevenson-Kovalev fight in 2014.
