Adonis Stevenson vs. Badou Jack moved to Toronto on May 19

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis ‘Superman’ Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs) and Badou Jack (22-1-2, 13 KOs) will be fighting each other on May 19 on Showtime at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Canada, according to Dan Rafael.

Up until today, the Stevenson vs. Jack fight was going to take place at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. This is the 40-year-old Stevenson’s hometown. It’s unknown why the fight has been moved suddenly.

Jack, 34, is from Sweden and he lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jack doesn’t have a huge fan base in Canada. Stevenson-Jack undercard doesn’t have anyone from Toronto, so it’s strange that the fight should be moved on short notice like this.

”The event will be in Toronto,” promoter Yvon Michel said to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “We are working right now to finalize the details. (It) was an unexpected (move) but we are professionals and we will make it happen.”

Despite his advanced age of 40, Stevenson continues to look good with each fight. However, it’s hard to know what Stevenson has left, because he hasn’t faced a good opponent since his mandatory defense against Tony Bellew in November 2013. Stevenson’s wins since then have come against beatable opposition in Andrzej Fonfara [x 2], Sakio Bika, Dmitry Sukhotskiy, Tommy Karpency and Thomas Williams Jr. What’s surprising is that Stevenson’s management hasn’t yet put him in with any of the dangerous fighters in the 175 lb. weight class during his long 12-year pro career like Sergey ‘Krusher’ Kovalev, Dmitry Bivol, Artur Beterbiev, Marcus Browne, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Jack, Joe Smith Jr., Sullivan Barrera and Anthony Yarde.

Stevenson said this on his Twitter on Monday about his title defense against Jack:

”We decided that the fight against Badou Jack will take place in Toronto. My next will fight take place in Montreal.”

Jack vacated his WB super middleweight title last year in January following his unification fight against IBF 168 lb. champion James DeGale in January 2017. That fight was ruled a 12 round draw, but a lot of boxing fans felt that Jack deserved the win. Jack then moved up to 175 and defeated World Boxing Association World light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly by a 5th round knockout last August.

Jack vacated the WBA title immediately rather than defend it against Dmitry Bivol. It’s just as well that Jack gave up the title, because Bivol would have likely beaten him soundly. Jack is a good fighter, but Bivol is on another level right now and looking unbeatable.

Jack has been inactive for the last 11 months of his career, which obviously is not a good thing given that he’s facing a very tough southpaw in Stevenson. It might not be that much of a negative for Jack, because Stevenson will have some ring rust of his own to deal with on May 19th, because he’ll have been out of the ring for 11 months by the time he faces him.

This is a fight between two inactive fighters. Jack has the edge in youth and the fact that he’s been taking on far better opposition in the last three years in fights against Cleverly, James DeGale, Lucian Bute, George Groves and Anthony Dirrell. Jack has been very serious about his career and not ducking the best, which many boxing fans feel that Stevenson has been doing.