Report: Sergey Kovalev To Fight Eleider Alvarez, Not Marcus Browne

WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev does have a title defense later this year, but now it will be against a different opponent and not against Marcus Browne.

According to multiple reports, Kovalev will now face Eleider Alvarez, in the main event of a future HBO boxing telecast at a date and venue to be determined later.

Kovalev was originally supposed to fight Marcus Browne at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, the site of Kovalev’s last two fights, both WBO light heavyweight title fights. The date was still not officially confirmed but it was slated to take place sometime between June and July. Kovalev won the WBO belt last November when he defeated Vyacheslav Shabranskyy to win the title previously vacated by Andre Ward.

According to Steve Kim, the plan is still to have WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol fight on the co-feature of that HBO card. There have been talks of potentially having Kovalev and Bivol fight in a WBA/WBO light heavyweight unification.

Alvarez has had a tumultuous past few months in regards to getting to fight for a light heavyweight world title. Alvarez was previously the mandatory challenger for the WBC light heavyweight title, but the organization put Alvarez in an interim title fight instead of putting him in a title fight against WBC champion Adonis Stevenson. Alvarez elected to not participated in the interim title fight, hoping to fight for a full world title. Alvarez has not fought since defeating Jean Pascal last summer in Canada.