By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly’s promoter Frank Warren won the purse bid for Cleverly’s March 16th bout against #1 challenger Robin Krasniqi (39-2, 15 KO’s) with a winning bid of $500,000. Warren will likely look to put the Cleverly-Krasniqi fight in Cardiff to take advantage of Cleverly’s large fan base.
Krasniqi wanted to fight Bernard Hopkins but he took a pass on the fight, and that put Cleverly in the position where he had to defend his World Boxing Organization strap against Krasniqi. Perhaps it’s for the best that Cleverly couldn’t get the Hopkins fight because I don’t think he was even close to ready to face the tough old veteran. We kind of saw that a little in watching Cleverly struggle to beat a C level fight named Shawn Hack last November in Los Angeles, California.
Cleverly eventually stopped Hawk in the 8th, but it was a pretty ragged performance from Cleverly. He threw rabbit punches and looked little more than a straight up club fighter. That was not a good fight and I can’t imagine Cleverly was impressed with the job he did against the limited Hawk.
Krasniqi is a real live dog in this fight. I think he’s got a chance to beat Cleverly if only because of his fast hands and surprisingly good power. I had half expected that Krasniqi would be a weak puncher based on his low knockout percentage but he’s actually a very good puncher.
I think the only reason Krasniqi doesn’t have more knockouts is that he appears to be fighting in the wrong division. He’s more of a super middleweight than a light heavyweight, and I think that hurts him he’s not as big as some of the guys that blow up after making the weight. Krasniqi looks like he comes into his fights at light heavyweight under the limit and closer to the upper 160s than 180 to 200 like a lot of cruiserweights do.
Krasniqi makes up for his lack of size by having outstanding speed and beautiful punching form. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fighter that throws with such classic punching form. Krasniqi throws textbook right hands, left hooks, uppercuts and jabs. He has such perfect form and it really shows in his punches, because he gets everything he has into his shots.
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