Cleverly sees victory over Kovalev leading to super fights

By Boxing News - 08/12/2013 - Comments

cleverly66By Scott Gilfoid: In the mind of WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-0, 12 KO’s) a win over unbeaten Sergey Kovalev (21-0-1, 19 KO’s) this Saturday night will lead to super fights against Bernard Hopkins and Adonis Stevenson.

Cleverly sees the Kovalev fight as one that’ll bring him a lot of attention in the U.S, because HBO will be televising the fight on Saturday night from the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff, South Wales. Cleverly believes, in his own mind, that Bernard Hopkins set up this test for him to see if he can pass it to earn a shot at him.

Cleverly said to BoxNation “I may have to weather the storm in this fight, but I’ll get through this and break though guy up. I’m going to take him into the trenches and break him down, and I’ll get to him…I’m going to make a statement and set up those super fights. I know this win will set up shockwaves…He [Hopkins] kind of left me to fight this guy. Let’s see what Cleverly’s made of. Let’s see him take on Kovalev and beat him, and then he’d earn his chance at fighting Bernard Hopkins. I think that was his mentality.”

I don’t think Hopkins is even thinking about a fight with Cleverly, to be honest. The reason why Hopkins wouldn’t be thinking about a fight against Cleverly is because he doesn’t have a fan base in the United States, and he’s never fought anyone that you can call a good fighter. The best guy that Cleverly fought was Tony Bellew, and that guy is totally flawed.

The rest of the top guys Cleverly has faced – Karo Murat and Robin Krasniqi – are nothing special. Once you get past those three fighters it’s just plain 2nd and 3rd tier opposition for as long as the eye can see with Cleverly’s resume. So why would Hopkins want to bother fighting a guy that the average casual boxing fan in the U.S has never seen or heard of? What’s the point? Hopkins certainly isn’t going to go to the UK to fight Cleverly, and if he fights him the U.S, no one will give a fig.

I think it’s going to take A LOT more than just beating Kovalev for Cleverly to earn a shot against Hopkins. By the way, I see Kovalev drilling Cleverly into oblivion on Saturday night early due to Cleverly’s face first style of fighting. But here are the guys I think Cleverly is going to have to beat in order to interest Hopkins: Chad Dawson, Beibut Shumenov, Adonis Stevenson, Carl Froch, George Groves, Jurgen Braehmer, Anthony Dirrell, Lucian Bute, Andre Dirrell, and Mikkel Kessler.

I realize that Cleverly won’t have time to fight all of them before Hopkins retires, but I think if Cleverly beat at least three of them, Hopkins would change his mind about fighting the unknown. But right now, it’s like ‘who is Cleverly.’ It’s not even worthwhile for Hopkins to waste time fighting him.



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