Nathan Cleverly, who is the current World Boxing Association (WBA) "regular" light heavyweight champion, received special permission from the WBA's Championships Committee to stake his title against Badou Jack, on Saturday August 26th in Las Vegas.

The fight will be part of the Showtime Pay-Per-View undercard to the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor showdown from the T-Mobile Arena.

This permission is granted at the request of the British boxer’s team, which was notified on July 27th, 2017, that they had to negotiate a fight against unbeaten mandatory challenger Dmitry Bivol, who is current WBA interim-champion at 175 pounds. This is endorsed in Article C16 of the WBA Rules.

However, Article C46 indicates that the organization may modify the decisions or application of the rules in special circumstances, as long as they benefit the boxers and the sport.

For this reason, the Championships Committee, based on the WBA rules, and at the request of the interested party, decided to grant the special permission for the Cleverly vs. Jack fight.

Nevertheless, the winner of this battle must immediately begin negotiations to face Bivol. If no agreement is reached with the Russian boxer before September 11th, 2017, the fight will be called to purse bids.

The parties involved were duly notified of the decision taken by the WBA Championships Committee.

A two-time world champion at light heavyweight, Cleverly (30-3, 16 KOs) bounced back from a defeat to Andrzej Fonfara in a 2015 Fight of the Year contender to defeat hometown champ Juergen Braehmer last October to pick up his WBA title.

Cleverly's previous title reign saw him take down the likes of Tony Bellew, Nadjib Mohammedi, Shawn Hawk and Tommy Karpency before dropping a contest to Sergey Kovalev. The Wales resident will make his fourth start in the U.S., having won two of his first three contests stateside.