Cleverly ready for Fonfara fight in October in U.S

By Boxing News - 07/23/2015 - Comments

Image: Cleverly ready for Fonfara fight in October in U.S(Photo credit: Scott Heavey) By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (29-2, 15 KOs) will be putting his credibility on the line when he meets up with the hard hitting Polish light heavyweight slugger Andrzej Fonara (27-3, 16, 16 KOs) in October in a fight that will be taking place in the United States on Premier Boxing Champions on one of the free television networks.

Cleverly turned down a title shot against WBA “regular” light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer. Cleverly decided on taking the better paying fight against Fonfara. I suspect Cleverly will soon regret his decision when he gets inside the ring with the hard hitting Fonfara.

Cleverly believes this is his big chance to prove himself in America by defeating a guy whose stock is really high right now after his win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last April.
“I’ll be the bigger guy and I’m facing a guy [Fonfara] who has fought guys slightly smaller,” Cleverly said to boxingwales.com. “That’s going to give me an advantage.”

Cleverly might have a little weight advantage, but I think he’s kidding himself if he thinks that being a little bit bigger is going to help him take the heavy head shots that Fonfara is going to be nailing him with in this fight.

Fonfara has really improved his game recently, and he’s throwing a lot more shots than he used to in the past. Surprisingly, Fonfara is able to land with huge power even when he’s not loading up on his shots. He looked sensational in destroying Chavez Jr. in his last fight in April, and Chavez Jr. has better power and clearly a better chin than Cleverly.

“Fonfara is the riskiest option I had but with greater risk comes greater reward. I was prepared to put that on the line,” Cleverly said. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for me to go back to America, bring back my best form and get firing again.”

It’s definitely a high risk gamble on Cleverly’s part in taking on Fonfara. If Cleverly wins, his career will be right back where it was before his loss to Sergey Kovalev back in 2013. Goodness knows, Cleverly’s stock has really dropped off from that loss and his subsequent defeat at the hands of Tony Bellew last November, a fight in which Cleverly looked timid and afraid to let his hands go.

It stands to reason that if Cleverly didn’t seem to have the nerve in a fight against Bellew, he’ll be much worse against a better puncher with more talent in Fonfara. Once Fonfara starts raining blows down on Cleverly’s head, my guess is we’re going to see Cleverly snap back into the timid mode again and just look to survive the full 12 rounds to keep from getting knocked out. In other words, Cleverly will go into sparring partner mode and just look to survive.

If Cleverly loses the fight to Fonfara by a knockout, then I don’t know where Cleverly goes from here. I mean, if he can’t even beat a contender like Fonfara, how in the heck he hopes to be able to compete with the other talents like Kovalev, Adonis Stevenson and Artur Beterbiev.

As for Cleverly’s fight against Braehmer, he can probably forget all about that unless Braehmer’s promoter likes the idea of matching him against a fighter that is coming off of a loss to Fonfara. Sadly, I wouldn’t put it past them to match Braehmer against Cleverly under those circumstances. We saw how Paul Smith was given two back to back fights against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham without him having done anything to rate either of those fights.



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