Nathan Cleverly vs. Denis Simcic next?

By Boxing News - 09/01/2012 - Comments

Image: Nathan Cleverly vs. Denis Simcic next?By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) could be defending his title next against #3 WBO Denis Simcic (28-1, 14 KO’s), according to Hattonboxing.com. There’s expected to be a press conference shortly to make an announcement on the 25-year-old Cleverly’s next fight.

Simcic, 31, is a German based fighter who originally came from Slovenia. He’s not really fought anyone that I would consider a good fighter, and I don’t quite understand why the World Boxing Organization has him ranked at number #3 because none of the other sanctioning bodies have him ranked in their top 15, and he looks very, very average to me of the fights I’ve seen of him. I noted that he seems to like to do a lot of clinching, doesn’t have good hand speed or power, and he’s incredibly easy to hit.

I’m really hoping that Simcic isn’t the guy that Cleverly is going to fight next, especially given that we’d heard names like Bernard Hopkins and Beibut Shumenov previously floated around as potential opponents for Cleverly. To go from one of those guys to this Simcic fighter it’s just really sad and disappointing to me.

I must say I’ve underwhelmed with Cleverly as the WBO champion. I thought he was going to usher in a new era where he took on the big names and didn’t take easy fights against obscure opposition, but all there is to show for Cleverly’s three title defenses since he picked up the WBO belt by the World Boxing Organization are wins over Aleksy Kuziemski, Tony Bellew and Tommy Karpency. And now Cleverly could wind up fighting the little known Simcic.

The way Cleverly is defending his title reminds me a lot of how WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm has defended his strap all these years, facing a bunch of little known guys and not facing popular world class fighters that would have a chance at beating him.



Comments are closed.