It's very late in the game for the heavy-handed Haiti-born Canadian, but if there's a road to last-minute career redemption for Adonis Stevenson, it starts this Saturday against Badou Jack at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.
At the very least, a clear and decisive win over Jack could stop the hemorrhaging of a professional legacy that has been bleeding out for years already.
A five-year WBC light heavyweight title reign, which began with a one-punch bang of a first-round knockout against Chad Dawson in 2013 and started talk of him being the next big thing in the sport, has completely lost all relevance at this point. A spurious claim as lineal champ-- in a lineage that only goes back six years, at best, anyway-- does not make up for the fact that "Superman" has lost out on every possible legacy-defining fight since he became division kingpin. Stevenson's reign has been little more than a series of cynical paydays and, with the exception of his loyal Quebec fan base, nobody much cares what he's up to anymore.
Name any major fight at 175 over the last half-a-decade that Stevenson should've and could've been a part of -- and Stevenson HASN'T been a part of it. No Sergey Kovalev. No Bernard Hopkins. No Jean Pascal (in an all-Canada fight that should've been a no-brainer, money-making blockbuster trilogy). Even a Joe Smith Jr. fight-- when it made sense after Smith beat Hopkins into retirement-- could never materialize.
"He has fought anybody willing to get in the ring with him," Stevenson's promoter Yvon Michel told the Montreal Gazette before Stevenson's last defense, about eleven months ago, against Andrzej Fonfara. "It's just a perception. He avoids Kovalev, which isn't the case. He avoided Hopkins? Not the case. Pascal? They all had opportunities to fight him and all turned it down. To cover, their promoters and themselves kept pretending it was the other way around...It seems to be a pattern, people turning against Adonis."
But forget the reasons and excuses behind fights not getting made. As the perceived top man in the division at the time, Stevenson will only be remembered for NOT having those big fights. History judges fighters on the weight of their black and white records (unless we're talking about Gennady Golovkin-- but that's a tale for another time). The names are either ON the resume or they are NOT.
And Stevenson's resume, especially as "lineal" champ and longest-reigning title holder, is extremely weak in a time when there definitely were legitimate legacy-defining fights to be made.
Boxing fans, for all their angry words and unforgiving social media posts, can be a forgiving lot and they can be especially forgiving if brutal, highlight reel knockouts are part of the equation. Stevenson can turn back a lot of the bad mojo attached to his career by making a statement against a very legitimate opponent like Badou Jack.
The ship has sailed on Hopkins and Pascal as opponents and, most likely, because of the depth of bad blood between both sides, a bout with Kovalev may be impossible to make.
But Jack represents a whole new wave of opposition to be dealt with. Stevenson can make up for five lost years in 18 month's time by turning back the challenge of the talented Money Team fighter this weekend and then diving at guys like Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev.
Stevenson's history tells us that this won't be the case-- he's not going to be proactive in finding the toughest opposition possible-- and boxing history, in general, tells us that, at 40 years of age, there's not much career left ahead of Adonis.
However, there IS a path to career redemption and anything is possible in this crazy game we love. We'll just have to see how things turn out this Saturday.