Fonfara wants to KO Cleverly

By Boxing News - 07/06/2015 - Comments

Julio Cesar Chavez Jr vs Andrzej Fonfara*Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Scott Gilfoid:
The talented #2 WBC, #3 WBA light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara (27-3, 16 KOs) sees no reason why he can’t totally obliterated former WBO 175 pound champion Nathan Cleverly (29-2, 15 KOs) when the two of them face each other in three to four months from now in the fall.

Fonfara notes that Sergey Kovalev totally smashed Cleverly when they fought each other in the summer of 2013, so he doesn’t see why he can’t do the exact same thing when he battles the #11 WBA ranked Cleverly.

It’s no secret that Cleverly and Fonfara are going into their fight in much different career positions. Fonfara is coming off of a huge 9th round stoppage win over former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in his last fight in April. Fonfara’s power was devastating in that fight with the way that he was able to hurt Chavez Jr. with almost every punch he threw.

Fonfara didn’t even need to load up with his shots. He was just focusing on a high punch output, and his power was so good that it didn’t even matter that he wasn’t loading up on his punches. Just by throwing countless shots, Fonfara was able to break Chavez Jr. down to the point where he quit on his stool following the 9th.

Incidentally, Chavez Jr. was knocked on his backside in the 9th and was lucky that the knockdown came at the end of the round rather than the beginning.

For Cleverly, he’s coming off of a 1st round knockout win over little known fighter named Tomas Man last May in a showcase/comeback fight. It was a confidence builder type of match-up for Cleverly, who was beaten in his previous bout against Tony Bellew last November in a dreadful performance from Cleverly. He fought like he was afraid to get hit, and it appeared to some that he didn’t trust his own chin. That’s obviously a bad sign when you’re about to face a monstrous puncher like Fonfara. I think it’s a really bad sign because with the kind of punching power that Fonfara has, he’s going to administer a beating on Cleverly if he doesn’t try and fight back hard. Heck, even if Cleverly does fight back, I still see it going really badly for him.

“Nathan fights and hits fast, but I’m much stronger,” Fonfara said to Fightnews.com. “I know my strengths – conditioning, knockout punch in both hands. People get tired when I’m just warming up. I will not predict a knockout, but why not do to Cleverly, what Sergey Kovalev did in 2013? I will break him down as soon as possible, starting with the first round show him who the man in the ring is.”

I believe the fight will basically be over by the end of the 1st round with Fonfara definitely showing Cleverly who is the boss in the ring. Fonfara is a bigger puncher than Bellew, and he throws way more punches than him. We’re talking about a fighter who is capable of throwing close to 80 punches per round with major power with each shot. Fonfara is a nightmare now that he’s changed his fighting style to emphasize a high work rate. It’s nearly impossible for anyone to keep up with Fonfara, and if Cleverly is foolish enough to try, I see him ending up face down on the deck.

This is a crossroads fight for Cleverly. If he wins the fight, he moves forward to a world title shot against WBA World light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer in 2016. If Cleverly loses the fight, his career will be in really bad shape with him having lost 2 out of his last 3 fights. I don’t know how Cleverly would be able to turn things around after a loss to Fonfara, because he’s got to be able to beat guys like this if he’s to stay at the top of the 175lb division. I mean, we already saw that Cleverly couldn’t hang with Kovalev, who holds three of the four belts at light heavyweight.

You have to imagine that Cleverly would also get destroyed by WBC champion Adonis Stevenson. This means that for Cleverly to find a place at 175, he’s got to prove that he can beat fighters like Fonfara, Artur Beterbiev and Braehmer. Even if Cleverly were to beat Braehmer, who some boxing fans see as a paper champion, Cleverly would still need to be able to handle guys like Fonfara and Beterbiev, because they would be guys that he would soon be facing if he were to win the WBA light heavyweight strap off of Braehmer. But if Cleverly can’t even beat them, then what kind of role can Cleverly have at light heavyweight? Other than just some gate keeper type of fighter who the younger light heavyweights use to sharpen their claws on, I don’t see Cleverly as having any real place at 175 at this point in his career. He had his 15 minutes of fame in holding down the WBO title from 2011 to 2013, and his time at the top now seems to be over with. I believe that will be confirmed by Fonfara when the two fighters face each other in the fall.



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