By Sean McDaniel: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly is slated to fight Tony Bellew on October 15th at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. That could be Cleverly’s last easy fight for a while now because he’s got a lot of tough contenders that are breathing down his neck and he can’t avoid them forever.

Also on the Cleverly-Bellew card, there’s talk of the James DeGale vs. EBU super middleweight champion Piotr Wilczewski in a fight that could overshadow the Bellew vs. Cleverly fight in terms of action and excitement. DeGale is coming off of a controversial 12 round decision to George Groves last May, and he plans on changing his style complete for the Wilczewski fight to be much more action oriented than before.

Despite losing the fight to Groves, DeGale is getting a second chance a belt because a lot of people thought DeGale should have been given the decision in that fight. Wilczewski is a tough fighter and won’t surrender his title easily without a hard fight. However, DeGale would seem to be a much better fighter than Wilczewski and should come out on top.

An intriguing idea of putting Cleverly and DeGale on the same card, if it does happen that is, is that we could be seeing a fight between those two fighters at some point in the future. It likely won’t happen soon because DeGale needs to move on to win a world title himself before thinking of facing Cleverly for his strap. But this is a fight to keep in mind for the future.

Cleverly didn’t look all that great in his last fight against Aleksy Kuziemski, who was brought in to replace Bellew at the last second after he failed to make weight. Kuziemski, not known for his power, staggered Cleverly and really opened up on him with a series of hard head shots. Unfortunately the fight ended early with Kuziemski getting cut up. But before he did, he really exposed Cleverly for his poor defense and his questionable chin.