By Scott Gilfoid: Kalle Sauerland, the promoter for WBA World light heavyweight champion Juergen Braehmer (48-2, 35 KOs), recently made an odd choice in selecting the struggling, some say ‘over-the-hill’, former WBO 175lb champion Nathan Cleverly (29-3, 15 KOs) as the German Braehmer’s next opponent for his title defense on October 1 in Germany. It was a weird choice by Sauerland for him to pick Cleverly as an opponent for Braehmer, because his career is been sagging for the last several years.
Cleverly has lost two out of his last three fights and three out of his last six. Sauerland seems to be making a fight many years too late. At the minimum, the Braehmer vs. Cleverly fight is three years late, because that’s when Cleverly’s career started going into a steep downward nosedive with him losing to Sergey Kovalev by a 4th round knockout in 2013.
Losses to Tony Bellew and Andrzej Fonfara have quickly followed for Cleverly. He’s now coming off a loss to Fonfara, and heading towards journeyman status. I don’t see the 29-year-old Clevelry being able to pull his career out of the nosedive that it’s right now, because the dvisiion has improved too much for him to do anything.