By Jason Kim: Former IBF welterweight champion Joshua Clottey (35-4, 20 KO’s) will be getting back in the ring on March 12th against Calvin Green (21-5-1, 13 KO’s) in a 10 round bout on the undercard of the Miguel Cotto vs. Ricardo Mayorga fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clottey, 33, will be moving up to junior middleweight for this fight and should in theory have more strength because of that. Clottey believes his power has disappeared because of the weight he has to take off each time he would fight at welterweight.

Clottey routinely walks around at a solid 180 between fights. You would have to think that 154 may even be too low for Clottey. However, at 5’8″, his chances of success at middleweight, super middleweight or light heavyweight would be around zero. The problem Clottey has is that he weighs too much for his limited height. The 154 pound division is weak, so Clottey may have a chance to perhaps win a title if his promoter Bob Arum can angle him against the weaker champions. Clottey already lost to Cotto in the past, and he’d likely get beaten again now that Cotto is being trained by Emanuel Steward and looking even better than before.

Clottey last fought a year ago against Manny Pacquiao in March 2010, and did a poor job of making a fight with Pacquiao. It would an opportunity for Clottey to win fans over by going all out to try and capture a title. Unfortunately, Clottey used his high guard and mostly just covered up for the entire fight without trying to press the fight to Pacquao. In the end, Clottey resembled a sparring partner who was just there to survive and by doing this, he turned off many fans by causing the fight to be incredibly boring to watch.

Green, 33, has lost two out of his last three fights, losing by knockouts to Darnell Boone and Sergio Mora. This is a good sign that Clottey should be able to stop Green without too many problems unless Clottey goes into his high guard and doesn’t throw any punches.