Ranking the Best Opponents for Adonis Stevenson's Next Fight

To Adonis Stevenson, perception means little.

Because as the still-reigning WBC light heavyweight champion sees it, reality is definitely in his corner.

The 37-year-old defended his share of the 175-pound kingdom for the fourth time with a fifth-round stoppage of No. 7 challenger Dmitry Sukhotsky on Friday night in Quebec City, again legitimizing what he sees as a clear claim on superiority.

"I'm the king of the light heavyweights," he told CBSSports.com two days before the fight. “You have to go in the ring and fight the best. I fought the best at light heavyweight; that was Chad Dawson. He was the Ring magazine and the linear champion. I fought the best, so I'm the king now.

"You beat the best, now you're the best."

And if you believed it going into Friday, there'd be little reason to change your mind now.

Stevenson was in control of the Russian-born Sukhotsky from the opening bell on the Showtime broadcast, scoring a single knockdown in the second round before ending matters in the fifth with three more. The final blow came courtesy of a clean straight left hand that deposited the challenger flat on his back, where he stayed for several minutes before rising.

Stevenson landed 80 total punches to Sukhotsky's 23 before the end came at 2:43 of Round 5.

The win boosted him to 25-1 as a pro and was his 21st stoppage, while the challenger was beaten for the third time in 25 fights overall and the second time in two world title tries.

"I used my speed and movement. I've got the power, and I know the knockout is going to come," Stevenson told Showtime's Jim Gray. "They have to come to me. I'm the champion. My job is to go in the ring and knock everybody out. I am Superman."

Following our typical post-fight custom, we took a look at the next in line for Stevenson and came up with a list of five top options. As always, we encourage you to take a look at our choices and make suggestions of your own in the comments section.

An amateur defeat of Sergey Kovalev and seven stoppage wins in seven pro fights have gotten Russian-born Montreal resident Artur Beterviev on the light heavyweight radar screen. And if promoter Yvon Michel wants to continue the momentum with a Stevenson fight, it's probably going to sell some tickets.

The right-handed slugger was matched with previously unbeaten Jeff Page Jr. on the Stevenson-Sukhotsky undercard in Quebec City and was dropped by a right hand in the opening round, but he quickly rallied to floor his foe three times in the second round to score a TKO win.

It came three months after a similar blitz of ex-IBF champion and one-time Stevenson opponent Tavoris Cloud, in which the veteran failed to last 40 seconds into the second round.

Is he likely to beat Stevenson at this stage? No.

But could it be an interesting match while it lasts? Absolutely.

Spanish-born veteran Gabriel Campillo has been on all sides of the light heavyweight division.

He won and lost the WBA title against Beibut Shumenov in consecutive fights with questionable scorecards in 2009 and 2010. Then he dropped another iffy verdict to then-IBF champ Tavoris Cloud in 2012 before providing little more than a three-round speed bump to Sergey Kovalev in a TKO loss in 2013.

Nonetheless, the now-36-year-old (his birthday was Saturday) resurrected his career with a TKO of previously unbeaten Thomas Williams Jr. four months ago and was on the short list to get a match with Stevenson this weekend before the champion's people ultimately decided on Sukhotsky.

He instead stayed busy with a seventh-round stoppage of Croatian Mirzet Bajrektarevic earlier this month, and as the sixth-ranked contender to the WBC title, he would make perfect sense as a Stevenson foe if the champion goes ahead and defends his belt again while awaiting a potentially more lucrative match later in the year.

If the version that fought Cloud shows up that night, Campillo would genuinely be a live underdog.

As professional references go, a boxer could do a lot worse than Mike Tyson.

The former undisputed heavyweight champion put a significant stamp of approval on Umberto Savigne's candidacy for 175-pound supremacy earlier this year, claiming the 35-year-old Cuban would successfully hold his own against either one of the two consensus kingpins of the light heavyweights.

"Savigne can beat both Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson," Tyson said. "He's got as much power as they do, but he's also a very skilled and intelligent fighter. Boxing fans deserve the chance to see those two fight against someone who has a chance to beat them."

For full disclosure, Savigne fights for Tyson's promotional company, and those remarks were delivered prior to the fighter's most recent appearance—a second-round TKO of badly faded former 168-pound champion Jeff Lacy in Miami on July 10. But while hyperbole does play a role, it's not as if Tyson's critique lacks merit.

The Cuban had more than 400 amateur fights and was a multiple-time national champion before turning pro. His combination of fundamental skill and athletic acumen could present Stevenson with a real problem.

A match between Stevenson and fellow Haitian-turned-Canadian Jean Pascal was nearly made in 2014 before falling off the map because of persistent disagreements about money. And if the fight happens in 2015, it'll probably be because Pascal has cost Stevenson a fair bit of cash after the fact.

A former IBO and WBC champion at light heavyweight, Pascal passed up a Stevenson opportunity to meet IBF/WBA/WBO champ Sergey Kovalev in March. But because the WBC decided at its recent convention that the winner would become Stevenson's mandatory challenger, it could ultimately be elementary.

A four-belt unification would unquestionably be a local favorite in Montreal, though it wouldn't have nearly the same mainstream appeal as a Kovalev-Stevenson get-together seems poised to generate.

It's a good fight, but you can bet Team Stevenson would rather have it after Kovalev than instead of.

A WBC/WBO unification between Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev looked to be a done deal when both men were fighting on HBO, but Stevenson scuttled those plans when he ditched the "Network of Champions" to head to Showtime in pursuit of a larger paycheck with Bernard Hopkins.

Hopkins provided a wrestling-esque swerve when he then jumped from Showtime to HBO to get his own match with Kovalev, which left Stevenson to battle criticism that he was ducking the big fights.

Kovalev called him a "piece of s--t" on HBO's air after an appearance earlier this year, but a defiant Stevenson told CBSSports.com this week that he'll do whatever it takes to get a Kovalev date in 2015:

I'm going to fight Kovalev. I'm going to beat him. And then it will be another story. He's got three titles, and that's OK, but in 2015 we're going to take care of business. We will be looking forward to that. And when I finish beating Kovalev, then the fans will probably find somebody else. It's always like that.

That's the reality and that's why I don't care. I want the fight. And the manager and the promoter will do their jobs, too. I want the fight. I want the fight so bad.