After years of not fighting his mandatory challenger, WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson will finally do just that.
Stevenson was previously ordered by the WBC to fight mandatory challenger and interim champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk and a purse bid was done on July 2. Originally, Phil Weiss, on behalf of Tom Brown, who promotes some of Al Haymon’s fights on PBC, posted a winning bid of $3,102,000, but the bid was withdrawn for reasons unknown. Afterward, promoter Yvon Michel won with a bid of $2,100,100, meaning he’ll have the reins in terms of securing a fight location and date.
Michel told RingTV that he plans to have the fight take place on November 3 in Canada. Although bidding has ended, the WBC will rule by July 5 on the validity of Brown’s bid being rescinded. Regardless of what the winning bid will be, 65 percent of the bid will go to Stevenson and the other 35 percent is going to Gvozdyk.
At $3,102,000, Stevenson would get $2,016,300 and the other $1,085,700 would go to Gvozdyk. If Michel’s bid of $2,100,100 remains as the winning bid, Stevenson would be entitled to $1,229,085 and Gvozdyk would receive $661,815. Another $210,100, which is 10 percent of Michel's bid, would come off the top and be awarded as a bonus to the winner of the fight.
After facing relatively lower-skilled opposition, Stevenson had his toughest title defense yet when he faced former light heavyweight champion Badou Jack back in May. Stevenson fought Jack to a majority draw on Showtime, thus retaining his title.
Gvozdyk won the interim title back in March at Madison Square Garden when he dominated Mehdi Amar en route to a wide unanimous decision. Gvozdyk was originally set to fight longtime mandatory challenger Eleider Alvarez, but Alvarez withdrew from the fight to later on take a fight against WBO champion Sergey Kovalev on August 4.
