By Steve Kim

This Saturday night from the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, WBO light heavyweight champion, Sergey Kovalev, faces the undefeated Eleider Alvarez.

But as Browne faced some legal issues stemming from a pair of domestic violence incidents, it forced Kathy Duva, the head of Main Events, to begin looking for other options.

She explained to BoxingScene.com,"We learned that Marcus Browne had some legal issues. We recognized that he was in jeopardy of perhaps losing his freedom and that is an uninsurable risk that I was not able to take. The deal wasn't done, yet.

"So at the same time Yvon Michel had issues with Alvarez-(Adonis) Stevenson. Alvarez was the (WBC) mandatory contender and Stevenson wanted to fight Badou Jack. It was standing in the way of getting the Jack fight done."

Alvarez (23-0, 11 KO's) had been the WBC mandatory for a few years but had for whatever reason not gotten his title shot versus Stevenson.

"We called Yvon up and said, 'Hey, you've got a problem, I've got a problem - maybe we can solve each others problems.' I said, 'Sergey would be happy to fight Alvarez, do you guys want to fight him? And Yvon said, 'gimme a day.' He called me back a day later and said,'OK, we'll take the fight. And I think we negotiated for about a minute on a couple little things, sent him a contract. About two days later and it was signed in in my email the next morning. Done, just like that,'' recalled Duva.

And in the end they may have ended up with the superior match-up in Alvarez, who has victories over Jean Pascal, Lucient Bute and Isaac Chilemba to his credit.

Duva says of him -"He's undefeated, he's number one in the world. I keep asking people: if he fought Marcus Browne, you tell me who would win? So yeah, Marcus Browne was a fine opponent and would've sold well and we we were very happy with him but that didn't work out and I think in a sense we did trade up because we got the guy who's number one in the world."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com