Cleverly not ready to return to ring, off March 1st card

By Boxing News - 01/16/2014 - Comments

cleverly4544By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-1, 12 KO’s) still isn’t ready to return to the ring to make his cruiserweight debut. He’s now off the March 1st card that he was scheduled to fight on, according to Dan Rafael. Cleverly has pulled out of 2 scheduled fights at cruiserwight, and you have to wonder whether his body needs a long, long rest for him to recover from his injuries.

Cleverly gave a big hint that he wouldn’t be fighting on March 1st several days ago when he said on his twitter “It’s been announced that I’m scheduled to fight at Aintree on 1st March. This is yet to be confirmed. I’m currently finalizing my training team and promotional agreement. I will update when everything is all confirmed.”

Like I said, that was three days ago, and he’s now off that card. It’s hard to tell what Cleverly means by saying he’s still finalizing his promotional and training team. He’s currently promoted by Frank Warren.

As bad as Cleverly looked in getting bludgeoned by Sergey Kovalev in 4 rounds last August, Cleverly should think seriously about staying at 175 pounds, because he’s going to end up getting hurt by one of the big punching cruiserweights. I’m not one of those people who believe that Cleverly was thrashed by Kovalev because he was weight drained. You can take Cleverly and Kovalev and have them fight at cruiserweight and the outcome would have been the same. It comes down to Cleverly not being able to handle the power of Kovalev, and not having the power to make him respect him.

It’ll be far worse for Cleverly at cruiserweight, because he’ll just be another light hitting fighter at that weight and he’ll have to eat a lot of hard shots to win his fights. Against almost anyone in that weight class, Cleverly will need to take enormous punishment for him to win what will likely be grueling 12 round decisions. Cleverly might as well stay at 175 and avoid the talented fighters like Adonis Stevenson and Kovalev. I mean, that’s the logical way of looking at Cleverly’s career. He can move up in weight and get blasted out left and right by hard punching cruiserweights or he can stay at 175 and avoid the two most talented fighters in that weight class.



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