By Scott Gilfoid: You can always smell fear coming from a fighter based on the excuse they make not to take on certain fighters. Perhaps we’re seeing a good example of that in WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) in his reluctance to take on the hard hitting 6’4” Enzo Maccarinelli (33-5, 26 KO’s) next. This is bad. Cleverly doesn’t want any part of knockout artist Maccarinelli. How funny. I guess that’s why Cleverly is the last British world champion. You’ve got to know you’re limitations.

For some reason that I can’t figure out Cleverly wants no part of Maccarinelli. Why is that? Is it because he wants Maccarinelli to earn a shot against him or is because he scared out of his wits of facing someone with Enzo’s kind of power. Given that Cleverly just finished scraping the bottom of the WBO barrel in taking on the #13 ranked Tony Bellew, it’s hard to buy an excuse that Maccarinelli needs to prove himself before he can get a title shot. Since when did Bellew beat anyone other than 2nd tier fighters to get a title shot?

Here’s one of Cleverly’s excuses for not fighting Maccarinelli in an interview at Walesonline.co.uk: “When he earns his shot – if he ever gets in the position to earn his shot – then I’ll happily take him out. I’ve said that all the way along…I think it’s down to jealousy.”

Does that sound weak or what? Cleverly is starting to remind me of Amir Khan and his excuses for not fighting Breidis Prescott and Marcos Maidana again. Well, here’s my take on all of this. Maccarinelli may not have one of the best chins in boxing, but he’s only been knocked out by fighters with a ton of power. His losses have come against David Haye, Ola Afolabi, Denis Lebedev, and Alexander Frenkel. Those are all big punching cruiserweights with a lot more power than Cleverly.

Maccarinelli does extraordinarily well against guys that don’t possess crushing power and if Cleverly were to fight Maccarinelli he’d be in serious danger more than Maccarinelli would. It would down to this: Either Cleverly knocks Maccarinelli out early by the 7th round or he’ll get knocked out himself. I doubt Cleverly would make it past the 3rd round against Maccarinelli, but if he makes it into the second half of the fight, Cleverly will have eaten a lot of monstrous shots and won’t be feeling too well. Maccarinelli hits a lot harder than Bellew with every punch and is a huge body puncher as well. No wonder Cleverly isn’t eager to fight him.

Yep, I think Cleverly is flat out scared of Maccarinelli and I don’t blame him. Maccarinelli may have a fragile chin at times but if you can’t get him out of there you’re going to be in big, big trouble. I don’t think Cleverly wants the kind of problems that Maccarinelli would bring to him. Hence we’ve got Cleverly making excuses rather than manning up and taking the fight.