By Steve Kim

On November 18th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) won a close and controversial twelve round unanimous decision against Sergey Kovalev (30-1, 26 KOs) for his IBF, WBA and WBO light heavyweight titles.

As part of that deal, Kovalev - who is promoted by Main Events - had an immediate rematch clause that they are trying to enforce.

Now, they are pushing to make this fight a reality in the first half of 2017.

Kathy Duva, the head of Main Events advised BoxingScene.com that HBO is looking to stage the fight on June 17th. She's reached out to Roc Nation Sports, who promote Ward, and heard nothing back.

"We sent a letter to Roc Nation three days ago letting them know that we are running up on a deadline. HBO prefers the 17th of June for the fight. We told them that per our contract that's the date for the fight and we sent them a notice basically saying lets get started working on this," Duva told BoxingScene.

According to our contract whenever we put something to them they have 72 hours to answer. It's been 72 hours, they have not answered."

There is also this important stipulation as it relates to the potential rematch.

"One of the terms is 120 days of the drug testing and we're coming up on the deadline to get started,"she explained.

So has Duva sent Roc Nation notices in the past and received any response?

"I had two emails saying, 'Yeah, we'll be in touch soon,' and then nothing," Duva said.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.