Adonis Stevenson vs. Oleksandr Gvozdyk to be televised on Showtime on Dec.1

By Jim Dower: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis ‘Superman’ Stevenson (29-1-1, 24 KOs) will be making a defense against mandatory challenger Oleksandr Gvozdyk (15-0, 12 KOs) on December 1 on the same night as WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder’s defense against Tyson Fury on Showtime. The fights will be taking place in different locations.

To make them both fights fit on Showtime on December 1, the network will stagger them with the televised portion of the Stevenson-Gvozdyk fight card starting at 7:00 p.m. ET followed by the Wilder-Fury PPV card starting at 9:00 p.m. ET, according to ESPN.

Stevenson, 41, will be defending his World Boxing Council 175 pound title against the unbeaten Gvozdyk from the Videotron Centre in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Stevenson-Gvozdyk will be televised on regular Showtime Boxing. The Stevenson vs. Gvozdyk fight is expected to start at 8:00 p.m.

The Wilder vs. Fury will be taking place at another location on December 1 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. This is the fight that interests U.S boxing fans are more than the Stevenson-Gvozdyk match-up. That fight is a good one, but the U.S fans are more interested in seeing Stevenson fight a rematch with Badou Jack, who he fought to an exciting 12 round draw last May in Toronto, Canada. The fight results were controversial with a lot of fans believing that Jack deserved the victory. The controversy was enough for fans to want to see a second fight between Stevenson and Jack. Stevenson vs. Gvozdyk isn’t nearly as interesting for obvious reasons. The 31-year-old Gvozdyk comes from Ukraine, and he’s not as well known to the casual boxing fans as Badou Jack, who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and is with Mayweather Promotions. Before Jack fought Stevenson, he’d already been involved in interesting fights against George Groves, Lucian Bute, Nathan Cleverly and Anthony Dirrell. In contrast, Gvozdyk’s most notable fights have come against an injured Isaac Chilemba, Yunieski Gonzalez, Tommy Karpency, Mehdi Amar and Nadjib Mohammedi. Gvozdyk defeated Amar by a 12 round unanimous decision to claim the interim WBC light heavyweight title last March.

The notable thing about the Stevenson-Gvozdyk fight is it will be a rare mandatory defense for Stevenson of his WBC title. The last time Stevenson defended his WBC 175 title was in 2013 when he defeated then mandatory challenger Tony Bellew by a 6th round knockout. Since that fight, Stevenson has made seven voluntary defenses of his WBC title without losing his belt. Eleider Alvarez was Stevenson’s mandatory challenger for a couple of years, but he failed to take the title defense against him after accepting a step aside fee so that he could fight other fighters. Gvozdyk isn’t going to step aside. He wants his title shot against the 41-year-old Stevenson, so the two will be facing each other on December 1. It’s been such a long time since Stevenson has fought a mandatory challenger that it’s hard to believe that he’s about to face his WBC mandated challenger Gvozdyk. Until Stevenson is inside the ring with Gvozdyk on December 1, a lot of boxing fans will have doubts whether the fight will happen. Stevenson has been fighting only once a year since 2016. If he’s able to make it to the ring on December 1 without postponing or pulling out of the fight, it’ll be his second fight for him in 2018.