By Daniel Ciminera: Speaking to Tavoris Cloud today, he indicated he’d be fighting “real soon, possibly March/April”, though didn’t give much away with regards to who, naming Chad Dawson, Jean Pascal, Bernard Hopkns, Beibut Shumenov, and Jurgen Brahmer as possible candidates. Which is basically the top 5 ranked guys without him and Nathan Cleverly included. As generic an answer as is possible, almost.

We can pretty safely rule out Brahmer who has a mandatory defence to make against Nathan Cleverly, the interim WBO title holder, who was interestingly left out from Cloud’s shortlist. When I asked him “what if Cleverly beats Brahmer?”, he wryly responded with “we’ll see” indicating he does not think that Cleverly can beat Brahmer or that he knows something we do not about the Brahmer/Cleverly clash. He also said he wants to unify the WBO title “this year” so we can assume that Brahmer or Cleverly are definitely on the cards in 2011.

We can also probably rule out Dawson for March/April after suffering his first career loss at the hands of Jean Pascal last summer. A well rested, and eager to get back on winning ways Dawson would be a very dangerous fight for anyone in the division to take. I can’t see the young Cloud taking this fight.

This leaves WBA and IBA title holder Shumenov, off the back of a 6th round KO versus experienced William Joppy, also a dangerous proposition, but with high reward in terms of title unifications. More so than fighting either Pascal or Hopkins who drew with each other last month. Pascal put an end to Dawson’s unbeaten run in 2010 and in gaining a draw with the ever-wiley Bernard Hopkins has cemented himself among the top light-heavyweights, and as we all know, Hopkins can make anybody look bad.

So for me, of these three, Shumenov is the only one worth going after right now in terms of “risk v reward” at least anyway, with a winter bout with the winner of Brahmer v Cleverly for a massive unification bout which would likely be one of the best fights of the year. And would be another shining-light example of top boxers not avoiding each other for the sake of it!