By Scott Gilfoid: I know WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KO’s) was hoping to wow the American boxing crowd with his fight last night against 2nd tier replacement opponent Shawn Hawk (23-3-1, 17 KO’s) at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, but the fact of the matter if Cleverly failed to do so. I know Cleverly’s fans see him as having an identical fighting style as fellow Welsh fighter Joe Calzaghe, who also was an arm puncher like Cleverly, but Calzaghe at least had a lot of hand speed and a variety of different punching angles that he liked to throw punches from. With Cleverly, he just looks like a slow arm puncher with Calzaghe’s speed or unpredictable punching angles.

I honestly wasn’t impressed by Cleverly. I wanted to be but he just looked like a tall, skinny slapper to me. That’s not interesting to watch. I’d rather see guys like Lucian Bute with big power or boxing talents like Chad Dawson.

Sure, Cleverly won the fight by an 8th round TKO, but he was kind of exposed as being little more than a high volume arm puncher along the way. It wasn’t impressive stuff, because there are already too many high volume weak arm punchers in the sport and what boxing fans really want to see is guys with big power and incredible speed, and sadly I just don’t see Cleverly as having either of those qualities going for him.

Heck, I’d rather see a fighter that doesn’t have much hand speed and has a lot work rate as long as he has crushing one-punch power. Case in point Alfredo Angulo. He’s not the fastest guy you’ll ever see nor does he throw a lot of shots, but he does have big power and because of that he’s exciting to watch.

Cleverly just looked like a weak guy last night and it was disappointing to see him throwing on average of 80+ punches per round with a punch accuracy of 40%, and yet still not being able to hurt Hawk with head shots. Cleverly did eventually hurt Hawk with body shots after finding out in the 7th round that he can’t take punches to the midsection too well, but that’s still not the same as having the power to KO a fighter with a head shot.

That’s what boxing fans want to see, and Cleverly just looks too weak right now in terms of power. At 25, I don’t know if you can say he’ll develop punching power as he gets older, because usually a fighter is as strong as he’ll ever get by the time they’re 25. I don’t see it with Cleverly. He threw close to 700 punches in slightly less than 8 rounds. That’s a lot of punches but what good is it when they’re just just slapping shots? Who wants to see that?