By Sean McDaniel: In what many boxing experts felt was going to be a closely contested fight between Commonwealth light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (17-0, 7 KO’s) and challenger Danny McIntosh (10-1, 4 KO’s) on Saturday night, turned out to be a huge mismatch with Cleverly knocking McIntosh down four times en route to stopping him in the 7th round at the York Hall, in Bethnal Green, London.
Cleverly, only 22, came out firing away in the 1st round, hitting McIntosh with hard shots to the body and big hooks to the head. McIntosh, who came out looked ripped as if he was on serious body building diet, had much less power in his shots and wasn’t able to match the big punches that Cleverly was bombing him with in the round.
Somehow, McIntosh, 29, was able to stay upright in the opening round despite getting hit with some tremendous punches from Cleverly. McIntosh came out fast in the 2nd round, opening up with a flurry of shot right hands. However, this didn’t slow Cleverly down for an instant as he fired back at McIntosh with powerful left hooks to the head and big right hands to the body. McIntosh fired back with some big right hands. But it had little effect on Cleverly, who merely shook his head, as if to say “You have to do better than that.”
A little big later in the round, Cleverly hurt McIntosh with a powerful left hand to the body. Cleverly then fired off three hard right hands to send the hurt McIntosh down on the canvas. As soon as McIntosh got to his feet, Cleverly resumed his onslaught, tagging him with combinations to the head.
A few seconds later, Cleverly put McIntosh down with a right hook to the head. McIntosh was flat on the canvas and looked as if he was finished for the night. However, he then sprang up off the canvas leaping to his feet like a cat, except that he almost fell over because he was still hurt.
McIntosh’s athletic display of courage and energy didn’t transfer over into the rest of the round, though, because Cleverly continued with his one-sided beating of McIntosh in the remaining seconds of the round, hitting him with eight consecutive shots until the round ended.
McIntosh, still hurt from the previous round, foolishly tried to mix it up with Cleverly early in the 3rd round and was almost immediately dropped by a big right hook from Cleverly. For the remainder of the round, Cleverly blasted away at McIntosh, hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink in a full three minutes of one way traffic.
McIntosh only threw like five punches in the entire round compared to over 40 for Cleverly. Most of Cleverly shots’ landed flush to the body and head of McIntosh. In the 4th, Cleverly seemed a slightly tired from all the punches that he had thrown in the previous round. His punch rate dropped slightly and he made the mistake of smothering his own punches by staying too close to McIntosh through much of the round. However, it was still a terribly lopsided round with Cleverly landing most of the punches by a wide margin.
McIntosh was only able to land one or two weak shots every ten of Cleverly’s shots. In the 5th round, Cleverly loaded up with big hooks and seemed to be trying to take McIntosh out with every punch. This caused Cleverly to miss with quite of few of his big punches.
Still, it didn’t matter much, because McIntosh was doing little in the round except for landing short punches from time to time, but not getting a lot of power on them. In the 6th and 7th, Cleverly bludgeoned McIntosh, hitting him with huge hooks and punishing him throughout both rounds.
McIntosh, again, only landed five punches in the 6th. Cleverly hurt McIntosh with a big right hand in the 7th, staggering him. Cleverly then dropped McIntosh with a hard right hand to the head. After the knockdown, Cleverly unloaded on a hurt McIntosh with several more right hands until referee Howard John Foster stepped in and stopped the fight at 1:30 of the 7th.