Cleverly could face Braehmer-Krasniqi winner for WBA 175lb title

By Boxing News - 03/18/2015 - Comments

cleverly677By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (28-2, 14 KOs) could be getting the winner of this Saturday’s fight between WBA World light heavyweight champion Jurgen Braehmer (45-2, 33 KOs) and Robin Krasniqi (43-3, 16 KOs), according to Sky Sports.

If the 28-year-old Cleverly can get past his still to be determined opponent next month on April 25th, he could then be leap-frogging over the top contenders in the light heavyweight division to take on the winner of the Braehmer-Krasniqi fight.

Needless to say it would be a controversial thing due to Cleverly having recently lost a fight against Tony Bellew last November. On top of that, Cleverly has been fighting at cruiserweight for the past year in an ill-advised move to that weight class after he was thrashed by Sergey Kovalev in a 4th round stoppage in August 2013.

I don’t know how the World Boxing Association could sanction a fight between the Braehmer vs. Krasniqi winner against Cleverly, given that Cleverly hasn’t fought in the light heavyweight weight class since 2013 when he was whipped by Sergey Kovalev. I mean, it seems to me that the Braehmer-Krasniqi winner should be facing one of the top 15 contenders that the WBA has ranked.

It’ll look really bad if Cleverly is able to leap frog over contenders like Artur Beterbiev, Bernard Hopkins, Marcus Browne, Jean Pascal, Sean Monaghan and Nadjib Mohammedi. The WBA already has made a controversial move in ranking Krasniqi at #2 with their organization based off his wins over largely fluff opposition.

Krasniqi was already beaten by Cleverly by a one-sided defeat in their fight in 2013. But now after beating four little known opponents, Krasniqi is being given another world title shot, this time against Braehmer.

As for Cleverly, he’s lost 2 out of his last 4 fights, and he’s someone that you normally wouldn’t assume would be getting a world title fight off of a record like that. In other words, Cleverly is 2-2 in his last four fights with victories over 2nd tier fighters Shawn Corbin and Alejandro Emilio Valori.

The Braehmer-Krasniqi fight will be taking place this Saturday at the Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It’s pretty much academic that Braehmer will win this fight, because he’s the slicker, more experienced, stronger and arguably more talented fighter of the two.

Cleverly and Braehmer were supposed to fight back in 2011 when Braehmer was the WBO light heavyweight champion. But the fight failed to take place after Braehmer suffered an injury. He was then subsequently stripped of his WBO 175 pound title, leading to Cleverly to be given the title outside of the ring.

Cleverly then held the WBO belt for two years, defending it largely against weaker opposition until meeting up with Kovalev in a fight that turned out to be a real disaster.

It’s not surprising that Cleverly is moving back down to light heavyweight, because he had no business in moving up to the cruiserweight division after getting wiped out by Kovalev in 2013. I mean, the loss to Kovalev proved that Cleverly didn’t have the chin to be taking on big punchers, and yet he was asking for trouble by moving up in weight to cruiserweight where he was guaranteed to face bigger punchers. Fortunately for Cleverly, he never got around to facing the huge punchers or any of the talented fighters in the division.

After his loss to Tony Bellew last November, Cleverly decided to pack it in and move back down to 175. It’s actually a good thing for him, because if he had been put in with the likes of the top cruiserweights it likely would have been bad for him. We never saw Cleverly fight the best cruiserweights like Marco Huck, Ola Afolabi, Grigory Drozd, Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Denis Lebedev, Rakhim Chakhkiev, Thabiso Mchunu, Ilunga Makabu, Krzystof Wlodarczyk, Krzysztof Glowacki, and Olesandr Usyk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyKfZwYweTk

I suspect that Cleverly would have been knocked out by all of those guys. I see the same thing happening with Bellew as well if he winds up fighting any of them. Clevelry is smart in moving back down in weight to light heavyweight now rather than waiting and wasting more time in his career. I think we’ll eventually see the same thing from Bellew once he gets beaten by one of the above mentioned cruiserweights.

The Cleverly fight will take place on the same card as the title fight between IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich and challenger Lee Selby on April 25th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.



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