By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) says he’s not overlooking his scheduled opponent Tommy Karpency (21-2-1, 14 KO’s) whom he’ll be meeting on February 25th at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales.
Cleverly, 24, had better not overlook Karpency because Cleverly isn’t skilled enough to overlook even the bottom feeders in the division. We just saw that with Cleverly winning a controversial 12 round majority decision to #13 World Boxing Organization ranked contender Tony Bellew last October.
You think that was just an accident that Cleverly barely won that fight? It wasn’t. That fight pretty much told you all you needed to know about the young Cleverly’s talent level. And if it didn’t, then you need to sit down and watch how Cleverly was staggered by Aleksy Kuziemski in his fight with him in May 2011.
Kuziemski has no power, yet he had Cleverly staggering. And then there’s Cleverly’s awful performance against Nadjib Mohammadi in December 2010, in a fight that Cleverly barely won.
Taken as a whole, you can see that Cleverly isn’t going to last long as the WBO champion unless he keeps getting matched against guys ranked below the top 10. Karpency wasn’t ranked at all by the WBO in the top 15 until recently when they inserted him at number #10.
What timing, eh? Cleverly won’t be able to make a career out of fighting guys ranked below the 10 spot, so I can’t see him lasing long at all. Once he fights #1 WBO ranked Dimitry Sukhotsky, it’ll be over for him. Forget about Chad Dawson, Tavoris Cloud and Bernard Hopkins. They’d destroy Cleverly no problem.
Cleverly said this to thesun.co.uk “It would be absolutely stupid and naïve to underestimate any opponent in boxing no matter what level you are fighting at…There is no way I am going to gamble with my unbeaten record against Karpency.”
Cleverly better not, because he doesn’t have the talent to gamble with anyone, even the lower level guys. Those are all probably life and death bouts for Cleverly, as we’ll likely see on February 25th when Karpency fights him to a standstill.