By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn says his fighter former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (29-2, 15 KOs) will be taking on the dangerous #2 WBC, #3 WBA, #4 WBO, #6 IBF Andrzej Fonfara (27-3, 16 KOs) in October at a venue and specific date still to be determined.
Hearn is currently working on lining up the 28-year-old Cleverly for a world title shot against WBA light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer. But before getting Cleverly the big title fight, he wanted to have him face a tough test in battling the Chicago-based Fonfara before that.
This could very well work against Cleverly and Hearn, as Fonfara is a big puncher with good height and a long reach. Fonfara is coming off of a career best 9th round stoppage win over former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last April.
It was a minor upset, but it still shook up a lot of people because few boxing fans expected Fonfara to so easily beat a tough fighter like Chavez Jr. It wasn’t even a close fight. Fonfara changed his fighting style by emphasizing quick combinations and a high volume attack rather than the big punches that he’d been known for in the past.
What Fonfara discovered was that he could punch with almost as much power while throwing quick flurries as he had when he was losing up on his shots. Needless to say, Fonfara’s new style of fighting makes him a lot more dangerous than he was before, and I can see this going badly for Cleverly.
“The Juergen Braehmer fight was one we were very close to taking but just felt that after his big win against Chavez, Fonfara was the perfect fight on the world stage,” Hearn said via Skysports.com. “We are working with his team on the date expected to be in October and we will release news shortly.”
Cleverly is ranked #11 by the WBC. He just recently moved back down to light heavyweight last month in annihilating an over-matched Tomas Man in one round. Before that, Cleverly had briefly fought at cruiserweight for exactly three fights. He gave up on the idea of fighting in the cruiserweight division after he was beaten by his old nemesis Tony Bellew by a 12 round split decision last November.
It was definitely a smart move for Cleverly to move back down to 175, because he was going nowhere at cruiserweight. Even with a loss to Bellew, Cleverly would have eventually gotten a world title fight in that division given the right match-making, but he had zero chance of beating any of the current cruiserweight champions.
The same goes for Bellew, but he’s going to have to find that out for himself in the near future, because it doesn’t look like Hearn is going to be matching him up against a live body before getting him a world title fight.
Cleverly was previously a successful WBO 175lb champion from 2011 to 2013, at which point he was stopped in the 4th round by Sergey Kovalev. Cleverly reacted in what some feel was a wrong-headed way by abandoning the light heavyweight division and moving up to cruiserweight.
In hindsight, it was a baffling move by Cleverly, because he had just finished being exposed as not having enough power to compete with the hard hitting Kovalev. Instead of targeting a weaker champion like Juergen Braehmer, Cleverly moved up to cruiserweight to fight in a division where there are a lot of fighters with Kovalev type power.
I hate to say it but I see the Cleverly-Fonfara fight going badly for Cleverly with him getting knocked out. Fonfara doesn’t have the kind of power that Kovalev has, but he hits hard enough to KO a limited light heavyweight like Cleverly. You’ve got to respect Cleverly for taking a fight like thgis, but I still see it going badly for him.
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