By Keith Idec

The HBO doubleheader scheduled for Saturday night clearly has been scheduled to intensify interest in what would be an intriguing unification bout between hard-hitting light heavyweight title-holders Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev.

Canada’s Stevenson (22-1, 19 KOs) will make a mandatory defense of his WBC 175-pound championship against England’s Tony Bellew (20-1-1, 12 KOs) in HBO’s main event from Pepsi Coliseum in Quebec City. Russia’s Kovalev (22-0-1, 20 KOs), the WBO’s 175-pound champion, and Ukraine’s Ismayll Sillakh (21-1, 17 KOs) will square off in the first televised fight at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT.

If Kovalev and Stevenson win Saturday night, Stevenson seems determined to fight someone other than Kovalev in his next fight. He would like to box Bernard Hopkins in what would be a bigger event in Montreal or Quebec City, the two cities where Hopkins fought Canada’s Jean Pascal. Even if a fight against the 48-year-old Hopkins doesn’t materialize, Stevenson, who has a growing fan base in Quebec, doesn’t think the time is quite right to battle Kovalev.

“I beat Chad Dawson, the light heavyweight champion, at light heavyweight,” Stevenson said. “Then I beat Tavoris Cloud, a former champion. Now I’m going to fight my mandatory. Who did [Kovalev] fight? He fought Nathan Cleverly. He needs to build his name and fight the former champions. I think it’s a good matchup, but I think he needs a couple more fights to build his name. Then after that, it will be a big matchup, me against Sergey Kovalev.”

The 30-year-old Kovalev floored Wales’ Cleverly (26-2, 12 KOs) twice on his way to winning the WBO light heavyweight championship by fourth-round technical knockout Aug. 17 in Cardiff, Wales. His impressive victory over Cleverly marked his HBO debut.

The 36-year-old Stevenson made an even more impressive HBO debut two months earlier, when the Haitian-born, Quebec-bred southpaw needed just one well-placed left hand and barely a minute to stop Dawson (31-3, 17 KOs, 2 NC) in the first round of their WBC championship match June 8 n Montreal. In his first title defense, Stevenson stopped Cloud (24-2, 19 KOs) following seven one-sided rounds Sept. 28 in Montreal.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.