Cleverly yapping about beating Fonfara

By Boxing News - 10/14/2015 - Comments

cleverly55 By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (29-2, 15 KOs) believes that he’s going to be the one who winds up having his hand raised at the end of his fight against #2 WBA, #3 WBC Andrzej Fonfara (27-3, 16 KOs) this Friday night in their fight on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV from the UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois.

Cleverly, 28, will be entering the lion’s den by going into Fonfara’s new home for boxing in Chicago in this fight. There won’t be a huge crowd of Cleverly supporters singing football songs all night long, and cheering every missed punch that he throws.

It’s going to be Fonfara who will have the support, and that’s going to make it extremely tough on #10 WBC Cleverly because Fonfara fights on adrenaline and he feeds off the crowd applause. What that means, of course, is that Cleverly is going to be forced to go toe-to-toe with Fonfara whether he wants to or not.

If Cleverly decides he wants to play it safe and back away from Fonfara like he did against Tony Bellew in their rematch last November, then it won’t matter. Fonfara will be on top of him and will cut off the ring to force Cleverly to fight. As such, Cleverly won’t be able to run for survival on Friday night. He’s going to have to fight his way out of the lion’s den otherwise he’s likely going to be scooped up afterwards from the canvas by his trainer and dragged back to his corner after taking a vicious thrashing.

“Fonfara is the puncher supposedly, and he’s the slight favorite going into the fight,” Cleverly said to garneksports. “It’s a level playing field. But I feel I’m the one with the speed, the technical aspects, the combination punching, and I think I will overcome Fonfara. I expect to win and I will win.”

YouTube video

The winner of the Cleverly vs. Fonfara fight will be in a better position to get a world title shot in the near future. Cleverly could have fought WBA “regular” light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer instead of Fonfara, but he chose the arguably tougher fight. Cleverly feels that he can still get a world title shot if he beats Fonfara, but he wanted to prove himself before getting a title shot. You’ve got to give Cleverly for doing that because most fighters would have taken the title shot straightaway rather than fighting someone who is favored to beat them like Fonfara is.

When Cleverly speaks of wanting to throw combinations against Fonfara, I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. I hate to say it, but if Cleverly tries to throw combinations against Fonfara, he’s going to wind up getting nailed by huge shots from the Polish fighter. I think the ending will come as fast for Cleverly as it did in his loss to Sergey Kovalev two years ago when he was knocked out in 4 rounds.

Cleverly’s best and perhaps only chance of winning this fight is to stick and move, and stay out of Fonfara’s wheelhouse. Cleverly can box a little, but I don’t know that he can move around the ring enough to keep from getting trapped by Fonfara and knocked clean out. With Fonfara, it only takes one time for him to trap you to score a knockout. He’s going to have plenty of opportunities to trap Cleverly in this fight to try and KO him. But if Cleverly is going to try and throw combinations like he says, then this fight is going to be easy for Fonfara.

“I don’t think there’s many weaknesses with Andrzej but what I can capitalize on I believe is my movement, my speed and my punch variation. I believe the variety will give Fonfara problems and I believe I can pull this off,” Cleverly said via skysports.com. “It’s a tough fight but, provided I get through this, then I’m in that elite mix.”

Even if Cleverly won this fight, I don’t see him being in the elite mix. He would still be behind talents like Eleider Alvarez, Sullivan Barrera, Artur Beterbiev, Jean Pascal and Yunieski Gonzalez.

I can’t see Cleverly ever beating any of those guys. I’m not even talking about the champions at 175 like Adonis Stevenson, Kovalev and Braehmer. Those guys are obviously too good for Cleverly to ever beat in my view. It seems to me that Cleverly still has unfinished business with Bellew that he needs to take care of before he starts yapping about beating Fonfara.



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