Bellew sees himself fighting Cleverly at cruiserweight

By Boxing News - 12/07/2013 - Comments

bellow657By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Bellew (20-2-1, 12 KO’s) is now a two-time former world champion challenger and on both occasions he’s been beaten in defeats against former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly and the current WBC champion Adonis Stevenson. And while Bellew has given up on the 175 lb. division in his decision to move up to cruiserweight, he still wants to fight Cleverly to avenge his loss. Bellew thinks he and Cleverly will meet up at cruiserweight at some point in the future so that he can avenge his 12 round decision loss from 2011.

“There’s no two ways about it, I detest him and he doesn’t like me, so it’s going to happen,” Bellew said to Sky Sports.

Bellew is following Cleverly into the cruiserweight division to try and find some kind of success in this weight class. Cleverly was destroyed recently by Sergey Kovalev by a 4th round TKO defeat last Summer, and the defeat has taken the interest from Cleverly in staying at 175. Like Bellew, he sees the cruiserweight division as a new beginning for him to start over and rebuild his shattered career.

There’s a good chance that Bellew and Cleverly will end up facing each other in the future in the cruiserweight division, because it might be one of their few chances to find some kind of success. The slender Bellew thinks he’s going to be able to bulk up and mix it up against the best cruiserweights, who have bigger frames than him. As skinny as Bellew is, I just can’t see him being able to bulk up enough to beat the likes of Marco Huck. That’s just not realistic, and you can throw in the other cruiserweight champions as well. Bellew doesn’t have the build to do the job. Cleverly is in the same boat. Too skinny and too weak to compete at cruiserweight. At some point I think Bellew and Cleverly will get a clue that they’re main hope of being a contender, which is all I see them being, is at 175 rather than at crusierweight.

As for who would win in a Bellew-Cleverly rematch, it would depend on how well they fight with the extra weight on them. I can definitely see both of them slow and sluggish with an extra 20 pounds of weight.



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