Cleverly agrees to terms for Braehmer world title shot

By Boxing News - 04/29/2015 - Comments

cleverly6777By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (28-2, 14 KOs) has agreed to terms for a fight against WBA World 175 pound champion Juergen Braehmer (46-2, 34 KOs) provided that Cleverly gets through his May 30th tune-up fight against an opponent still to be determined at the O2 Arena in London, UK.

Cleverly will have to travel to Germany to take the fight with the German native Braehmer because he’s got the WBA title. Cleverly is just a challenger. The World Boxing Association actually has two champions at 175.

Braehmer is considered the regular champion and Sergey Kovalev is the Super champion. He’s arguably a heck of a lot better than Braehmer.

We already know that Kovalev is better than Cleverly after he obliterated him in just four rounds in their fight in August of 2013.

It’s kind of a surprise that the 28-year-old Cleverly is getting a world title shot at all given that he’s coming off of a 12 round split decision loss to Tony Bellew last November. Getting a world title shot off of a loss to Bellew is rather bizarre to say the least, but strange things like that happen all the time nowadays. I mean, look at super middleweight contender George Groves. He was put in a WBC super middleweight eliminator bout against Christopher Rebrasse following back to back knockout defeats at the hands of IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch.

Cleverly and Braehmer came close to fighting each other in 2011, but the fight was called off after Braehmer suffered an injury in training. Braehmer was subsequently stripped of his WBO title, which then went to Cleverly.

“Terms have been agreed,” said Cleverly via walesonlin.co.uk. “It’s just a matter of me getting this next fight out of the way and then we are going to make an announcement. I think I’ll quite enjoy that, it will be good. It will probably take that edge off, that pressure off, of the home crowd behind you. So it’s just a matter of going out, being ready, being focused and ripping that title from him. I genuinely believe I’m going to do it.”

Given how poor Cleverly looked against Bellew in his last fight, I don’t think he stands a chance of beating Brahmer. I would favor Braehmer over Bellew by a wide margin if there was a way for Bellew to melt back down to 175 to take that fight. But Cleverly doesn’t have the pop in his punches, and he’s facing a guy with good power and excellent boxing skills. In addition to that, Braehmer is a southpaw with an excellent jab. He’s basically superior to Cleverly in every category as far as I’m concerned.

Cleverly moved up to the cruiserweight division in 2014 and picked up wins over a couple of soft opponents before losing to Bellew last November. It was a clear mistake for Cleverlry to move up in weight because he didn’t have power at light heavyweight, and his lack of power was even more pronounced at cruiserweight. The thing is Cleverly didn’t even get a chance to fight any of the good cruiserweights like Denis Lebedev, Grigory Drozd, Marco Huck, Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Krzystof Wlodarczyk, Rakhim Chakhkiev, Ola Afolabi, Thabiso Mchunu, Dmitry Kudryashov or Victor Ramirez. I think all of those guys would have stopped him.



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