By Keith Idec

Adonis Stevenson answered more questions about Sergey Kovalev than Sakio Bika on a conference call Wednesday.

While responding to one of those questions, Stevenson clarified why he said he wasn’t impressed by Kovalev’s eighth-round technical knockout of Jean Pascal in its immediate aftermath.

“I’m not impressed because Pascal – this is the first big fight he had [since] Bernard Hopkins,” Stevenson said. “He fights one time in a year. … That’s why I’m not impressed by that, because Pascal is not an active boxer, like he used to be back in the day. So that’s why I’m not impressed about [Kovalev’s] performance.”

The 32-year-old Pascal has fought just five times since losing an aforementioned rematch and the WBC 175-pound crown to Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs, 2 NC) in May 2011 in Montreal. Nevertheless, Russia’s Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) became the first fighter to knock down Pascal (29-3-1, 17 KOs, 1 NC), Stevenson’s Quebec rival, in their March 14 fight at Bell Centre in Montreal. Kovalev scored a third-round knockdown and hurt Pascal badly in the eighth before the fight was stopped with a disoriented Pascal still on his feet.

That convincing victory made Kovalev, who owns three of boxing’s four recognized light heavyweight titles, the mandatory challenger for Stevenson’s WBC championship. The 37-year-old Stevenson (25-1, 21 KOs) is scheduled to defend his title against Cameroon’s Bika (32-6-3, 21 KOs) on April 4 at Pepsi Coliseum in Quebec City (CBS; 3 p.m. ET/noon PT).

Stevenson reiterated on the conference call that he intends to face Kovalev in his next fight, yet emphasized that he is fully focused on overcoming the awkward, rugged Bika.

“I don’t think of Kovalev now,” Stevenson said. “I think of Bika. So it doesn’t matter what I’ve said [about Kovalev] now because I have a fight coming up with Bika. In the future I want to unify the titles, but for now I’ve got Bika in my face. I’m not going to think about [the Kovalev] fight. That comes after. Now it’s Bika in front of me.”

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.