By Scott Gilfoid: In his column at The Sun,, promoter Frank Warren speaks highly of his fighter undefeated light heavyweight contender Nathan Cleverly (20-0, 10 KO’s), who recently defeated Karo Murat by a 10th round TKO last Saturday night a week ago in the Magnificent Seven card. Warren says “At 23, he [Cleverly] has a big future ahead of him. I honestly believe that, by the end of his career, he will be talked about in the same bracket as Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe.” I do believe that Cleverly will be talked about like Hatton, but not in a positive sense. With the amount of punches that Cleverly’s head was absorbing from Murat in that fight a week ago, I think Cleverly is going to be lucky if he can still talk in the future if he keeps taking punishment like that.

Cleverly needs major work on his defense. He takes too many head shots. He was fighting Murat, a fighter who I don’t even rate. I can’t even imagine what would happen if Cleverly were matched against a talented light heavyweight like Chad Dawson or Jean Pascal. I don’t think it would be pretty. Cleverly, with his poor defense, would be a punching bag for both of those fighters. And there’s other guys in the light heavyweight division who would give Cleverly all kinds of problems, such as Beibut Shumenov, Jurgen Brahmer, and Tavoris Cloud. I think Cleverly do well as long as he avoids those fighters. He’s good at beating European fighters like Murat. I give him credit for that, but those are guys are at another level.

I do agree with Warren about Cleverly being talked about in the same bracket as Hatton. Calzaghe is a different kind of fighter. He’s looked at like gold in Europe, but in the U.S, fans are a lot more skeptical about his accomplishments when they see his weak record. And, it didn’t help that 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins went life and death with Calzaghe and 40-year-old, clearly shot Roy Jones Jr., was able to knock Calzaghe to the canvas in the 1st round of their bout. I think Calzaghe is someone that can’t be considered the gold standard for all of boxing among different countries, because there’s a lot of fans that don’t believe he was that great outside of the UK. Frankly, I think Calzaghe would lose to most of the Super Six tournament fighters, with the exception of maybe Allan Green and Mikkel Kessler. I think Carl Froch, Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward and Arthur Abraham would all beat him if given the chance. Unfortunately, Calzaghe retired suddenly without ever fighting those guys.

I see Cleverly as a decent guy that might end up picking up a paper title and holding onto it as long as he avoids the names that I mentioned above. I think Cleverly would lose to Froch, because he’s just not a big enough puncher and his defense is so poor. God, it’s poor.