Just announced we fighting Joshua clottey on 2nd of April at Newcastle ent centre! Tough fight but gotta get it done 󾮖

— Anthony Mundine (@Anthony_Mundine) February 20, 2014

By Allan Fox: 38-year-old former WBA super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (46-5, 27 KO’s) is saying that he plans on fighting the 36-year-old Joshua Clottey (37-4, 22 KO’s) on April 2nd at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre in Broadmeadow, New South Wales, Australia. This fight makes about as much sense as Mundine’s recent fight against the 42-year-old Shane Mosley. Clottey has fought only two times in the last four fights in beating journeyman Dashon Johnson by a 10 round unanimous decision last year in September. Before that, Clottey stopped Calvin Green in the 2nd round in November of 2011.

Clottey stopped fighting on a regular basis following his lopsided 12 round unanimous decision loss to Manny Pacquiao in March of 2010. After the loss to Pacquiao, Clottey has rarely stepped inside the ring, which is kind of disappointing because he had enough left in the tank to capture a title at 147 or 140 if he had stayed active all those years. But at 36, he’s up there in age and it’s unclear what he can accomplish fighting in the 154 lb division against the likes of Erislandy Lara, Carlos Molina, Demetrius Andrade and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Not that Clottey would get a shot against any of them.

For him to get a fight against those guys, he’ll have to fight on a regular basis, beat some good contenders, and hope that one of the sanctioning bodies gives him a high ranking to become a mandatory challenger for one of the champions. Clottey can forget about WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. ever fighting him, because that’s not going to happen in this lifetime.

Mundine had been talking about wanting to fight Erislandy Lara next. It looks like he couldn’t get that fight for some reason. Fighting the non-ranked Clottey probably won’t do much to push Mundine up the rankings. Mundine is currently ranked No.4 by the World Boxing Association, and he needs a solid win over someone that’s actually relevant still to get him up to the No.1 spot. Lara would have been an ideal opponent for Mundine if he wanted to put himself in position to challenge for the WBA title against Mayweather Jr. However, Mundine is in the same boat as Clottey is in terms of getting a fight against Mayweather. It’s not realistic that Mayweather would choose to fight Mundine at any time in the future given that the U.S fans have no idea who he is.