By Ryan Burton

WBC heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson has been heavily criticized in recent years for his selection of opponents.

Since winning his title with a highlight reel first round knockout of Chad Dawson in 2013, Stevenson had quality successive defenses against Tavoris Cloud and Tony Bellew.

The criticism began to mount for more recent opponents like Dmitry Sukhotskiy, Sakio Bika, and Tommy Karpency.

 

Stevenson has maintained that he has wanted to fight the best opponents and hopes this fight will silence his critics.

"I hope that this will make everybody shut their mouth. I accepted his challenge. Everybody knows Badou Jack is a good boxer. This is a big, big fight. I think this is one of the biggest fights of the year. I am not the only guy who decides if I am going to fight and who I am going to fight you know. Now it is Badou Jack. It is no problem. So now I expect all the people to stop trash talking and hating. Everybody sees I am fighting Bad Jack and this is a big fight at 175," Stevenson told BoxingScene.com and ATG Radio.

In late January, Showtime held a press conference in New York held a press conference to announce their slate of fights  for the first half of 2018. The network has many quality fights on the horizon and many feel Stevenson-Jack was the highlight of the announcement.

"This is the best fight on the schedule. I don't think people expected that and when Showtime announced it people were very surprised. This is the fight that the fans want. I am always giving the fans what they want but like I said I am not the one who decides that. It was easy to make the fight happen because Badou Jack is with Floyd Mayweather and I am with Al Haymon so the fight is very easy to negotiate," Stevenson explained. 

Stevenson-Jack takes place on May 19th st the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The fight will air live in the United States on Showtime.

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