In his early days, Curtis Stevens formed one-half of the Chin Checkers duo with Jaidon Codrington. No one really calls Stevens by that handle anymore. Codrington is retired and Stevens has moved on to new tags such as “Showtime” and his current incarnation, “Cerebral Assassin.”

But on Thursday, when Main Events announced that Stevens would be facing James De La Rosa on the non-televised undercard of Sergey Kovalev’s light heavyweight championship with Andre Ward, Stevens reached back to his past to express his excitement.

A constant presence on Twitter, Stevens (28-5, 21 knockouts) posted a badge-like logo that read: “Chin Checkers Academy” underneath the words: “Nov. 19 He’s bacc!” Spelling notwithstanding, Brooklyn’s Stevens will try to continue his resurgence with his middleweight bout with De La Rosa (23-4, 13 KOs) at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

After negotiations sputtered to face David Lemieux this month, Stevens was glad to finally have an opponent to focus on. “I’m happy someone is willing to fight me,” Stevens said in a press release on Thursday, the same day his fiancé gave birth to a son, King Stevens. “Bless the Gods. Now, it’s time to turn it up a notch and get ready to check in and check out. The bully is back.”

Stevens blitzed previously undefeated Patrick Teixeira in the second round on the Canelo-Klan undercard on HBO this past May after his listless effort against Hassan N’Dam in his previous fight. Stevens was his old, menacing self under trainer John David Jackson against Teixeira, and he will try to duplicate that effort against De La Rosa, who lost a decision to rising prospect Jason Quigley in May and has lost four of his last seven. “I know I have a tough fighter in front of me in Curtis Stevens,” De La Rosa said in the release. “With his style and my style, we’ll warm the fans up for Kovalev-Ward.”

Struggling to locate a copy of RING magazine? Try here or…

SUBSCRIBE

You can subscribe to the print and digital editions of RING magazine by clicking the banner or here. You can also order the current issue, which is on newsstands, or back issues from our subscribe page. On the cover this month: Sugar Ray Leonard