Cleverly wants Hopkins fight

By Scott Gilfoid: After struggling and getting stunned in his 4th round cut stoppage win over the little known fringe contender Aleksy Kuziemski (21-3, 5 KO’s) last Saturday, WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (22-0, 11 KO’s) is now targeting 46-year-old WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KO’s) for a unification bout. That, of course, isn’t going to happen soon, if ever.

Hopkins isn’t going to take on an unknown like Cleverly, who has never fought in the United States and who few boxing fans have ever heard of over there. Hopkins surely won’t be traveling to the UK to give Cleverly, a fighter with very limited experience, the upper hand. I mean it wouldn’t be much of an upper hand because Hopkins is the much better fighter, but he probably won’t like the idea of fighting there and find himself possibly on the receiving end of a home town decision. I don’t see it as even being a fight.

Hopkins is so much better than Cleverly that it’s not even interesting to contemplate the fight taking place. Cleverly looked terrible in his fight against Kuziemski, looking weak and wide open on defense. And it was really sad when Cleverly was staggered by a left hand from the weak punching Kuziemski in the 3rd. That kind of told you all you need to know about Cleverly’s ability.

Kuziemski then teed off on Cleverly for a little while after hurting him but was unable to finish him off. But the 4th round was very interesting for what Cleverly was allowed to get away with. He came out quickly looking to make up for his bad showing in the previous round, and started grabbing Kuziemski with his left hand and tagging him with his right. Cleverly did this over and over again during a sustained period of action while the referee just stood there doing nothing. At the end of the flurry of activity from Cleverly, Kuziemski was bleeding from a cut under his eye.

The referee then didn’t even give Kuziemski a chance to make it through the round to have his corner try and stop the cut. The referee just stopped the fight. I felt sorry for Kuziemski, because not only did the referee fail to stop Cleverly from holding and hitting with some brutal uppercuts while holding onto the back of Kuziemski’s neck but then to make matters worse, the referee stopped the fight immediately after that sequence was over when Kuziemski emerged with a cut. That seemed so wrong. If anything, I thought Cleverly should have lost points and/or been disqualified for the holding and hitting. And this wasn’t the first fight I’ve seen Cleverly use the old holding and hitting before. He’s done it in the past. That kind of thing wouldn’t fly if Cleverly fought a guy like Hopkins in the U.S. Cleverly would get penalzied so quickly his head would be spinning. Someone has got to ween him from that kind of dirty pool before he steps outside of the UK or else he’s going to be losing fights based on that alone. Can you imagine Cleverly losing one or two points every round for holding and hitting in a 12 round fight? I can. Of course, he’d be disqualified by the third or fourth round if he didn’t get his act together. But, heck, why fight outside of the UK when you’re able to get away with it at home? But just don’t go dreaming of having a quality guy like Hopkins wanting to come and fight you at home in the UK. He won’t. You got to do it in the U.S or not at all. And that means, no holding and hitting. I don’t know how Cleverly would fight if he’s not able to do that. I imagine he would struggle badly and end falling into that pattern again when things start looking bleak. He then would get disqualified.

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