By Vadim Pushkin

Eleider Alvarez (22-0, 11 KOs) is about to get his wish, because the World Boxing Council has officially ordered a 30 day negotiations period for a deal to get reached with WBC world champion Adonis Stevenson (28-1, 23 KOs).

If no deal is reached, the World Boxing Council has scheduled a purse bid for March 24 in Mexico City.

This past Friday night at the Centre Videotron in Quebec City, Quebec - Alvarez scored a fifth round knockout over former 168-pound world champion Lucian Bute (32-4-1, 25 KOs) in a final WBC eliminator.

Alvarez is now the mandatory challenger to Stevenson, who last saw action in July when he knocked out Thomas Williams.

Stevenson is scheduled to return to the ring on April 29th at New York's Nassau Coliseum.

With the negotiations being ordered by the WBC, and the purse bid being a month before Stevenson's scheduled return, Alvarez would have to be regarded as the frontrunner opponent for the April date.

Both boxers are advised by Al Haymon and promoted by Yvon Michel of GYM.

"I hope to get the fight against Stevenson next," Alvarez said. "I managed to close the mouths of a lot of people. The critics gave me a lot of motivation. I won in the same manner that I did against Ryno Liebenberg in Monaco."

Michel was very impressed with his boxer's performance in the contest with Bute.

"Eleider demonstrated that he is superior to James DeGale and Badou Jack. Lucian applied a lot of pressure on him, but Eleider stood up to it. That's what all great champions do. What we saw was the guy that we had been looking for, the guy who won the gold medal at the 2007 Pan American Games and the guy we saw in his first seven or eight professional fights during which he was dazzling. It was really him," Michel said.