Originally Posted by
Kirkland Laing
Adonis Stevenson's Promoter Reveals on HBO and Kovalev - Boxing News
HBO could have had the Kovalev-Stevenson fight but didn't value it as much as they paid for Ward-Rodriguez. They paid three point one for the Ward fight but were only offering just over two for K-S. The deal sat on the table for a couple of months. If HBO had come up with close to three for K-S they would have had the fight. Now they let Stevenson walk away to Showtime. What a bunch of clowns.
That's with Yvon's spin. Read between the lines a little.
Think about it this way.
First, Kovalev agreed to the money and terms HBO offered. No balking. No re-negotiating. He would face Agnew first and then Stevenson for the deal offered. In contrast, Stevenson didn't. He balked at the money offered and tried to re-negotiate. Does that imply an eagerness to face Kovalev?
Second, Yvon doesn't address whether Stevenson would sign a two-fight deal that obligated him to face Kovalev if he beat Fonfara. Rather, Yvon discusses that he was going to get a bigger purse to fight Fonfara from Showtime than he would on HBO. What Stevenson wanted to do was get paid a lot of money to face Fonfara first and then have the option of renegotiating with HBO over the Kovalev fight. If you're HBO, you're only paying him a lot to face a stay-busy opponent like Fonfara, if he 100% agrees to face Kovalev when he wins.
Yvon admits that hard-core fans are missing out on a fight with Kovalev because of Stevenson ("for the fans, not for hard core fans") thinks a Hopkins fight is more lucrative. That's what happening here. It shouldn't be surprising because Stevenson didn't sound like he wanted to face Kovalev in his post fight interview following his last fight.
At bottom, who's fault is it that we aren't seeing them fight? Stevenson's. It is in the top 3 fights that fans are most looking forward to and now we aren't getting it. We thought we would see it after Kovalev and Stevenson shared a double header. Then Haymon got involved we aren't getting the fight. Who's better off? Stevenson. Who's not better off? Boxing fans.
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