By William Mackay: The World Boxing Organization (WBO) said a big no to the idea of WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 kO’s) facing #4 WBO ranked light heavyweight contender Robin Krasniqi (37-2, 13 KO’s) on April 28th at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington, London, UK. The WBO pointed out that it’s time for the 25-year-old Cleverly to finally defend against his mandatory challenger after having defended his title three times already with most of the defenses coming against lower ranked fringe contenders.

Indeed, a lot of boxing fans have been wondering when Cleverly would finally take on his #1 contender the hard hitting Dmitriy Sukhotsky (18-1, 13 KO’s) rather than the lower ranked opposition that Cleverly has been facing as of late. In his last two defenses, Cleverly faced #14 WBO Tony Bellew and #10 Tommy Karpency. It was interesting to note that Karpency wasn’t even ranked in the top 15 by the WBO when Cleverly signed to fight him but he was later positioned at #10 in what turned out to be a sickening mismatch with Cleverly easily beating Karpency by a 12 round unanimous decision last month on February 25th. In Cleverly’s first defense of his title, he defeated replacement opponent Aleksy Kuziemski by a 4th round TKO. Kuziemski wasn’t Cleverly’s mandatory challenger either.

The WBO said on their site wboboxing.com “Francisco Valcarcel [the president of the WBO] commented that the bout between Nathan Cleverly and Robin Krasniqi can’t and won’t be sanctioned. Nathan Cleverly’s fight with Karpency was sanctioned with the provision that the winner meet the mandatory opponent 120 days from the day of the bout.”

There are reports that Cleverly’s promoter is looking to fix the Cleverly-Krasniqi problem so that the fight can still happen.

The supposed idea behind the Cleverly vs. Krasniqi fight was that the winner of the bout would then possibly fight the winner of the April 28th fight between WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins vs. Chad Dawson in the summer. What this would mean is that Cleverly wouldn’t have faced his mandatory challenger in five fights as the WBO champion. I guess it’s okay if the WBO is letting Cleverly get away with it but it probably doesn’t feel to good if you’re the number #1 WBO mandatory challenger and you see Cleverly sitting on his title facing guys like #14 Bellew, #10 Karpency, #4 Krasniqi and #4 Kuziemski and failing to fight the No.1 guy Sukhotsky.

Cleverly has been the WBO champion since last year on May 19th, when the WBO stripped then champion Juergen Braehmer for failing to fight his mandatory challenger Cleverly. A couple of days later, Cleverly defended his title for the first time against Kuziemski. However, it’s now been almost a year since Cleverly was given the WBO title and he’s still defended the title against his mandatory challenger and it looks as if he won’t be defending it anytime soon if he’s allowed to defend against the light hitting Krasniqi and then face the Hopkins-Dawson winner after he easily beats a badly over-matched Krasiniqi.

There’s no comparison between Cleverly’s mandatory challenger Sukhotsky, 30, from Russia and the #4 WBO Serbian born Krasniqi. Sukhotsky is clearly the much bigger puncher, better boxer and overall much better fighter than Krasniqi. In other words, Kukhotsky is a real threat to beat Cleverly by knockout unlike Krasniqi. I see Sukhotsky as a better version of Tony Bellew with better stamina, better punch assortment and better defensively. What makes Sukhotsky even more dangerous is he’s as counter puncher with knockout power. He makes his opponents pay for their mistakes and I’m really not surprised that Cleverly hasn’t defended against Sukhotsky because he’s got the talent to end Cleverly’s brief rein as the WBO champion with one punch. It’s just disappointing to see Cleverly steered around this guy because it reminds one of how former WBO super featherweight champion Ricky Burns was matched softly while the WBO super featherweight champion and to where he never did defend against his No.1 challenger Adrien Broner.

I’d be surprised if the WBO caved in and allowed Cleverly to get yet another optional defense of his WBO title again, because his mandatory challenger Sukhotsky has been waiting for ages for the title shot and it doesn’t seem fair to have him skipped over so that Cleverly can face guys like Krasniqi, who is pretty much on he same level as Karpency in talent. I rate Karpency as better than Krasiqi because Karpency at least has a tiny bit of power. If you look at Krasniqi’s resume, you’ll note that pretty much all of his wins during his seven year pro career has come against 2nd and 3rd tier opposition. Krasniqi did win the WBO European light heavyweight regional title last October against someone named Abdelkahim Derghal (14-11-1, 8 KO’s) and then defend it once against Hakim Zoulikha (16-3, 8 KO’s) last January, but that was a regional strap, not a world title and those obscure opponents.

The Krasniqi fight just looks like another soft opponent for Cleverly to fight and that’s too bad because it just looks like he’s milking his title against weak opposition and for some reason not defending it against Sukhotsky.