Curtis Stevens-James De La Rosa added to Kovalev-Ward card

Curtis Stevens didn’t land the big fight with David Lemieux, but he did get a fight on the Kovalev-Ward undercard.
by Wil Esco @wil_esco

Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Middleweight puncher Curtis Stevens (28-5, 21 KOs) has just been added to the Sergey Kovalev-Andre Ward undercard where he’ll take on James De La Rosa (23-4, 13 KOs), albeit on the non-televised portion of the card according to RingTV. But after negotiations fell apart for what I thought would’ve been a crackin’ fight against David Lemieux, Stevens is just happy to be back in action.

“I’m happy someone is willing to fight me,” Stevens said in a press release on Thursday, the same day his fiancé gave birth to a son, King Stevens. “Bless the Gods. Now, it’s time to turn it up a notch and get ready to check in and check out. The bully is back.”
Stevens is most recently coming off an impressive TKO victory over Patrick Teixeira on the Canelo-Khan undercard and looked like a more complete fighter under the tutelage of new trainer John David Jackson.

Meanwhile, De La Rosa is coming off two consecutive losses and is hoping to rebound here in this fight. He’s 3-4 in his last seven fights so big opportunities for him are probably running thin.