by David P. Greisman
When the negotiations between light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson and 175-pound titleholder Sergey Kovalev first fell apart in early 2014, Stevenson jumped from HBO to Showtime. The fighters’ network alignments have been the major reason why the fight hasn’t happened since.
Kovalev is under an exclusive contract with HBO. Stevenson isn’t under an exclusive contract with any network, but his adviser, Al Haymon, has been doing business with Showtime and featuring his boxers on other networks that air his “Premier Boxing Champions” broadcasts.
Kovalev is expected to face Andre Ward this November. Win or lose, Showtime executive Stephen Espinoza would still like to have Stevenson vs. Kovalev become reality.
“Candidly, I don’t understand what the problem making it is,” Espinoza told BoxingScene.com. “The simple solution in a case like this is just to put it out to bid. HBO makes a sealed bid. Showtime makes a sealed bid. The highest bid gets the fight.”
The last time the fight was even close to happening was in April 2015, when Kovalev had gotten into position as mandatory to Stevenson’s world title and forced a purse bid, only to pull out of the purse bid process.
“Sergey is contractually tied to HBO and we can't go to a purse bid,” Kathy Duva of Main Events, which promotes Kovalev, told ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael at the time. “We can't fight the fight if we lose the bid, so there's no point in going to the bid and putting on charade.”
Said Espinoza this past weekend:
“I understand Kovalev is under an exclusive contract. Unfortunately for the good of the sport, that’s not a positive thing in all cases. It’s good for networks. I’ve been guilty of it as well. But by the same token, I generally try to say that I won’t stand in the way of fights happening.
“Amir Khan called me before the Canelo fight to give me a head’s up and explain things. If I had expressed, if I had laid down on the tracks to stop it, I don’t know if he would’ve not taken the fight, but our conversation was, ‘I understand. I don’t have a super-high level fight for you, so I won’t begrudge you going over to HBO and taking on Canelo.’”
Khan wasn’t under contract with Showtime anymore at that time. His deal had expired, but there had been a relationship between the fighter and the network, Espinoza explained.
The only fighter Showtime has an exclusive contract with these days is heavyweight titleholder Anthony Joshua. Espinoza was asked about a hypothetical situation in which, say, Tyson Fury continues to be the heavyweight champion, has an exclusive deal with HBO, and the only way a fight between Joshua and Fury happens is through each network agreeing to put forth sealed bids. Would Espinoza allow Joshua to potentially fight on HBO instead of Showtime for that bout?
“I mean, yeah. As a sort of consistency of the theory, sure,” Espinoza said. “Whether it’s Stevenson or Kovalev or Khan, or Canenlo when we had him, look, there’s going to be business factors in terms of the specific deals. As a general concept, I don’t like network deals standing in the way of THE fight in the division.
“When there’s a division where there’s multiple good fights, I’ll probably be a little bit stingier with the fighters I have under contract. But when there’s one huge fight in the division that everybody wants, like Mayweather-Pacquiao, like Kovalev-Stevenson, I think it’s incumbent upon everyone in the sport not to stand in the way to the extent that business considerations allow.”
Stevenson hasn’t appeared on Showtime since 2014, when he outpointed Andrzej Fonfara and stopped Dmitry Sukhotsky. His win over Sakio Bika in 2015 was on CBS, while his victories over Tommy Karpency and Thomas Williams Jr. were on Spike TV.
Espnoza said Stevenson would be featured on Showtime again if he had an opponent like a Kovalev or an Artur Beterbiev.
“It really is the caliber of the fight,” he said.
