By William Mackay: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) isn’t expected to face a very serious threat in his next fight on February 25th in Wales. However, once this fight is out of the way, Cleverly wants to up his competition by facing 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins in the summer and then finish the year with a fight against Carl Froch.

Cleverly, 24, thinks it’s definitely possible to get both Froch and Hopkins in 2012 and would like to try and lure one or both to Wales to make that happen.

Cleverly is content to wait on the Froch fight until he’s both Lucian Bute and Mikkel Kessler in 2012, but after those fights he wants to face him.

Cleverly told the express.co.uk “Froch always wanted to fight Welshman, Joe Calzaghe. Now he can fight me instead, possibly sometime around the end of the year. The difference in weight is only 7lbs, and it would be a blockbuster.”

It could be a blockbuster if Cleverly gets a solid win over a big name like Bernard Hopkins before the Froch fight. Cleverly needs at least one win over a recognizable fighter, because thus far he’s fought mostly obscure domestic and flawed world level opposition. A fight between him and Froch would be big right now, but I would hardly call it a blockbuster given how Cleverly barely beat Froch sparring partner Tony Bellew in his last fight.

You got to do better than that if you want to start talking Froch and Hopkins. I’d like to see Cleverly beat Hopkins but right now I don’t think Hopkins wants that fight. He’s looking to cash out against big names and Cleverly is more of a little name right now. Cleverly needs Hopkins or Froch to become a name in his own right, but I can’t see either of them doing him any favors by fighting him.

What Cleverly needs is to knock off some of the lower hanging fruit in the light heavyweight division, like Tavoris Cloud, Zsolt Erdei, Jean Pascal, Chad Dawson and Beibut Shumenov. If he could be one or two of those guys, Hopkins and Froch would likely change their minds quickly about wanting to fight him. The problem I see is I’m really not confident that Cleverly can beat any of those guys. I think he’d have a chance against all of them but not a very good chance. Pascal might be his most beatable opponent followed by Shumenov. But I think Cloud and Dawson would dominate Cleverly and possibly stop him.