By Keith Idec

Sullivan Barrera probably won’t land a light heavyweight title shot in his next fight.

That doesn’t mean the hard-hitting contender from Cuba won’t benefit from his impressive knockout against Vyacheslav Shabranskyy on Friday night in Indio, California. Coming off a unanimous-decision defeat to IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Andre Ward that HBO broadcast March 26 from Oakland, California, Barrera bounced back by dropping Ukraine’s Shabranskyy three times on his way winning by seventh-round knockout.

HBO Latino televised Barrera’s defeat of the highly regarded Shabranskyy (17-1, 14 KOs) as the main event of a tripleheader from Fantasy Springs Resort Casino.

“Between the exposure he got fighting Ward, and the fact that he put up what I thought was a tremendous fight, considering the odds against him in that fight, and then to come back with a win like this, he proved that he’s right in line for a title shot,” Kathy Duva, Barrera’s promoter, told BoxingScene.com. “It’s great. That’s the way it should be. You should be rewarded when you take a chance. He just did that in two fights. He had a terrific year, when you consider that.

“At light heavyweight, where you have unified titles and very few title opportunities, I think he really is further along the road today than he was at the beginning of this year. So that’s a win.”

Duva expects the 34-year-old Barrera (18-1, 13 KOs) to climb the light heavyweight rankings of all four recognized sanctioning organizations after beating Shabranskyy.

She acknowledged, though, that Barrera likely will have to wait for a title shot because Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) is contractually obligated to an immediate rematch with another fighter her company, Main Events, promotes, Russia’s Sergey Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs). Quebec’s Adonis Stevenson (28-1, 23 KOs) owns the WBC light heavyweight championship, but Duva doesn’t think a Stevenson-Barrera bout is imminent, either.

“Al Haymon has 800 light heavyweights,” Duva said, exaggerating for effect. “If Stevenson’s gonna fight somebody, you know it’s gonna be one of them. Unless something changes there, I don’t see that as being a plausible possibility. But we are talking to HBO about finding a fight for him in the near future, in the early part of next year. We’re gonna find a place for him. It was a terrific win. It really boosted his career.

“When you’re in a division like this one, and you have a unified champion, you’ve gotta realize that you don’t have opportunities to fight for titles that guys in other weight classes do, where you have four champions. So you’ve gotta fight your way up the ranks by fighting contenders, kind of the way it used to be when there was only one champion. This is the way boxing was supposed to be in these divisions like middleweight and light heavyweight, where the titles are all tied up with one guy.”

Duva wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Barrera fought Kovalev for three light heavyweight titles by the end of 2017.

“I’m sure he’ll fight another contender, and another, and whatever he has to do to be in line for a title shot,” Duva said. “Obviously, he’s not right in line for a shot against Ward, because he already fought him. But we’d like to think that Ward won’t be holding onto those titles for that long. That’d put [Barrera] back in the mix for Sergey, when he wins a world title again – and I do mean when. So we’ll see.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.