Nathan Cleverly vs. Tomas Man on Saturday at O2 Arena, London, UK

By Boxing News - 05/27/2015 - Comments

cleverly333By Allan Fox: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (28-2, 14 KOs) will be back inside the ring this Saturday night facing 38-year-old journeyman Tomas Man (13-8-1, 8 KOs) in a scheduled 8-round tune-up fight on the Kell Brook vs. Frankie Gavin card at the O2 Arena in London, UK.

The Cleverly vs. Man fight is a bout that the 28-year-old Cleverly is taking to help him get ready for his world title shot against WBA World light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer on September 5th in Germany.

Cleverly has that fight scheduled, and he just wants to get in a stay busy fight against a body so that he can be 100 percent ready for that important bout. Cleverly is moving back down to the light heavyweight division after briefly competing at cruiserweight for three fights. He beat Shawn Corbin and Alejandro Emilio Valori before losing to Tony Bellew last November.

The loss to Bellew made Cleverly realize that he wasn’t cut out for the cruiserweight division. Bellew isn’t a great cruiserweight, and it gets much tougher than him. Had Cleverly stuck it out at cruiserweight after the loss to Bellew, then he would have surely floundered in that division.

In time, Bellew will also likely find it not to his liking when he starts facing the quality cruiserweights in the division. At this point, Bellew is still taking on weak opposition in that division and hasn’t faced the good contenders yet.
The 5’10” Man is from the Czech Republic, and he’s got a nice 11-fight winning streak going for him that he’s piled up in the last two years.

Tomas Man has turned his career around and shown a lot of improvement in his game from how he started out his career with 8 defeats in his first 11 fights. However, Man is clearly not in the same league as the 6′ 1½″ and he’s not going to present any real competition for him other than possibly giving him some rounds. Man can be stopped early, as his record shows. He’s been knocked out three times early in his fights. Cleverly isn’t much of a puncher though, so there’s a chance this fight could go the distance unless Cleverly really steps on the gas.

“I am looking forward to my return at light heavyweight,” said Cleverly via Fightnews.com. “It is all about making sure I am feeling good back at that weight and doing the weight properly. After Saturday night I will have something big to concentrate on – which I hope will be the Brahmer fight.”

Cleverly is quite fortunate to be getting a world title shot against Braehmer considering his loss to Bellew. Cleverly is no longer ranked in the top 15 at light heavyweight, and you can make an argument that guys like Artur Beterbiev are much more deserving of a title shot against Braehmer than Cleverly is. But this is about money, and about Cleverly being better known than many of the other light heavyweight contenders. Cleverly may not be as good as guys like Beterbiev and Eleider Alvarez, but he is better known than them.



Comments are closed.