WBA "regular" light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly and Badou Jack are set to fight on the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor pay-per-view, but the winner will have another challenger waiting in the wings.
The WBA sent out a statement, which can be read in its entirety below, saying the winner of the fight between Cleverly and Jack must negotiate a deal with mandatory challenger Dmitry Bivol by September 11 or else a purse bid will be ordered.
British Nathan Cleverly, current World Boxing Association (WBA) Light Heavyweight Champion, received special permission from the Championships Committee to stake his title against the Swedish living in the United States, Badou Jack, on Saturday, August 26th in Las Vegas.
This permission is granted at the request of the British boxer’s team, which was notified on July 27th, 2017, that they had to negotiate a fight against the Russian Dmitry Bivol, current Interim Champion at 175 pounds. This is endorsed in Article C16 of the WBA Rules.
However, Article C46 indicates that the organization may modify the decisions or application of the rules in special circumstances, as long as they benefit the boxers and the sport. For this reason, the Championships Committee, based on the WBA rules, and at the request of the interested party, decided to grant the special permission for the Cleverly Vs. Jack fight. Nevertheless, the winner of this battle must immediately begin negotiations to face Bivol. If no agreement is reached with the Russian boxer before September 11th, 2017, the fight will be called to purse bids.
The parties involved were duly notified of the decision taken by the WBA Championships Committee.
Cleverly and Bivol were ordered to fight for the title a few weeks ago, but Cleverly and promoter Eddie Hearn have been trying to negotiate a deal that would allow Cleverly to fight on potentially one of the biggest boxing pay-per-view cards of all time.
The champion has yet to defend his title since defeating Juergen Braehmer last year. Cleverly vs. Jack is one of two title fights happening on the card, with the other being Gervonta Davis vs. Francisco Fonseca for the IBF junior lightweight title.
The August 26 card will be on Showtime pay-per-view and Fightful will have complete coverage of the card, including a post-show podcast on Fightful.com and YouTube.
