By Keith Idec

LAS VEGAS – Badou Jack doesn’t expect his light heavyweight title fight against Nathan Cleverly to be easy Saturday night.

But if the former WBC super middleweight champion overcomes Cleverly, he would want to face WBC 175-pound champion Adonis Stevenson in his following fight. Sweden’s Jack has wanted to challenge Stevenson for over a year, but settled for landing another title shot in his first fight since moving up from 168 pounds to 175.

Jack reiterated his desire to fight Stevenson before a press conference Thursday at MGM Grand. The 33-year-old Jack (21-1-2, 12 KOs) must first defeat Wales’ Cleverly (30-3, 16 KOs) in their 12-round fight for Cleverly’s WBA light heavyweight title on the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Conor McGregor undercard at T-Mobile Arena (Showtime Pay-Per-View; $99.95).

“I wanted the Stevenson fight, but I guess he wasn’t interested,” Jack said. “I don’t know. That’s the first fight we wanted, even right after the [Lucian] Bute fight [in April 2016].”

Once Jack determined he would move up to light heavyweight after his majority draw with IBF super middleweight champion James DeGale (23-1-1, 14 KOs) on January 12 in Brooklyn, Mayweather, whose company promotes Jack, and Jack began calling out the Haitian-born, Quebec-based Stevenson again. Instead, Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs) took a largely unnecessary rematch against Poland’s Andrzej Fonfara (29-5, 17 KOs, 1 NC), who Stevenson stopped in the second round June 3 at Bell Centre in Montreal.

“Floyd said it,” Jack said. “Everybody said it, that we want [the Stevenson] fight for the next fight, hopefully in May, June or whatever. But I guess he fought Fonfara instead. He wanted an easier fight. I don’t know. I don’t say that he’s ducking me, but I wanted that fight.”

Stevenson’s next fight likely will be an overdue mandatory defense against Colombia’s Eleider Alvarez (23-0, 11 KOs). If Jack beats Cleverly and still can’t land the Stevenson fight, he’ll look at other options in a light heavyweight division that features undefeated Andre Ward (32-0, 16 KOs), who owns the IBF, WBA “super” and WBO titles, and former champion Sergey Kovalev (30-2-1, 26 KOs).

“I’m looking for the big fights after this,” Jack said, “but I respect what’s in front of me and that’s Nathan Cleverly. We’re gonna take care of him first.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.