By Steve Kim

On Saturday night from the Forum in Inglewood, California, a light heavyweight match-up between Joe Smith and Sullivan Barrera kicks off the HBO 'Boxing After Dark' broadcast. They are fighting for the WBC International light heavyweight title - but really what's on the line is a possible fall match-up against Sergey Kovalev (32-2, 26 KOs).

"Look, everything's possible," said Jolene Mizzone, the matchmaker for Main Events, which represents Barrera and Kovalev, who is coming off his June 17th loss to Andre Ward.

"This weekend there's a lot of light heavyweight fights going on so I think basically getting past this weekend with everybody fighting and letting the pieces fall into place. But it's definitely a possibility."

The winner of this bout makes an argument that they are the best 175-pounder in the world without a major world title belt. Although the likes of Artur Beterbiev, Oleksandr Gvodyk and Dmitry Bivol would certainly have strong cases.

"The problem is two-fold with the state of the fighters in that division," explained Mizzone to krikya360.com.

"Guys like Adonis Stevenson, you have Beterbiev - who is going through issues, you have (Elieder) Alvarez who is a mandatory for what feels like ten years. You have light heavyweights, they're just now fighting or they're not fighting the right opposition. So with Joe Smith and Sullivan you've got to give kudos to two guys that are saying, 'OK, lets fight each other and see who's the best', not tip-toeing around and going and fighting guys that are hand-picked like some of the other people are doing."

Smith (23-1, 19 KOs) will look to build on his impressive run, which includes a first round stoppage of Andrzej Fonfara and a career ending TKO of Bernarnd Hopkins. For his part, Barrera (19-1, 14 KOs) has bounced back from his decision loss to Andre Ward, by stopping undefeated Vyacheslav Shabranskyy and once beaten Paul Parker.

Steve Kim is the news editor for krikya360.com.