By William Mackay: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (22-0, 11 KO’s) could be just joshing by saying that he’ll possibly retire from the sport of boxing if he loses to challenger Tony Bellew (16-0, 10 KO’s) next Saturday on October 15th at the Echo Arena, Liverpool, England. But if Cleverly is serious, he needs to get a little more realistic attitude about his own abilities. He’s not that good that he can walk over everyone.

It’s not a good sign when you have a young champion with little experience against 1st tier opposition already talking retirement if he gets beaten.

Cleverly hasn’t done much to consider himself a lock to beat any of his contenders, even a bottom feeder.
Cleverly told the dailystar.co.uk “Losing isn’t an option…I would go as far as to say if I lost I would retire. If I was to lose this fight I would definitely get out of the sport. There would be no point in me continuing.”

That sounds like a nice quitting attitude.

Cleverly was staggered in the 3rd round in his first defense of his World Boxing Organization title by Poland’s Aleksy Kuziemski last May. Although Cleverly was able to come back in the next round to stop Kuziemkski on cuts, it wasn’t a good sign that Cleverly was hurt by a fighter without much power like Kuziemski. It showed that Cleverly’s defense and/or his chin is suspect, and he could have a lot of troubles in the future against even lower ranked fighters if he gets hit hard enough.

Say what you will about Bellew being a fairly mediocre fighter, he can punch when he’s set his mind to it. When he’s not playing it safe like he did in his last fight, he can really punch hard. As such, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Bellew landed a peach of a right hand right on the sweet spot of Cleverly’s vulnerable chin to send him crashing to the canvas in a big heap. And if Cleverly carried out his retirement vow, he’d be packing it up without really having learned anything.