By Luke Furman

According to TVA Sports and The Montreal Journal, a deal has been reached for Jean Pascal to challenge WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol on November 24 in Atlantic City.

Their clash will be broadcast on HBO, who plan to drop boxing from their programming at the end of the year.

Pascal was originally scheduled to return to the ring on November 9 in Sydney, Nova Scotia, but his fight against Canadian Gary Kopas was canceled last week to allow the former WBC world champion to attend his father's funeral the following week.

Sainvoyis Pascal died of a heart attack at the age of 89 in Haiti.

In his last appearance in the ring on July 20, Pascal (33-5-1, 20 KOs) defeated Steve Bosse of Quebec by technical knockout.

As for Bivol (14-0, 11 KO), he had a tougher than expected time in winning a twelve round unanimous decision over tough veteran Isaac Chilemba (25-5-2, 10 KO) on the 4th of August.

Pascal was one of the candidates to face Bivol on the August date, which saw Eleider Alvarez score a knockout of Sergey Kovalev in the main event. But Pascal was unable to take the fight, as he already had a deal in place to face Bosse.

Bivol need a backup plan in a hurry - after losing his planned opponent, Joe Smith Jr.

As BoxingScene.com reported earlier, Smith - who initially was the planned opponent for Bivol - has instead accepted a deal to challenge IBF light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev - as part of a card being streamed on DAZN on December 15 or 22.

Pascal had initially retired from the sport last year after knocking Ahmed Albiali in December, before staging a comeback with the Bosse contest.

Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.