By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) has high hopes of landing a nothing to lose fight against former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s) in June in a fight that would be taking in Wales rather than Nottingham, where Froch lives.
Clevery doesn’t have much of a chance to get that fight unless Froch gets beaten in his next fight by IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute on April 14th. If Froch loses that one, we’ll likely see him in with Cleverly straightway to try and win any kind of title, even a paper one like Cleverly’s strap.
Let’s be real about this: Froch will whip Cleverly like no tomorrow when and if that time comes. It’s still a good fight for the 24-year-old Cleverly because he’ll get his biggest payday of his career and because of his youth and utter lack of experience against quality opposition, he won’t take much heat for getting knocked around by Froch. There are so many interim titles floating around that Cleverly would have won of those straps by his next fight.
Cleverly’s promoter Frank Warren said this to the BBC Sport “I would like to see Nathan fight again in early June at Cardiff City’s ground in a big open air show. If Carl Froch wants to step up a weight and fight him I’d take that fight in a heartbeat, he’s made for Nathan.”
I think it’s the other way around. Nathan is made for Froch. He eats up those brawler types, especially guys without a lot of power or hand speed like Cleverly. This would be too easy for Froch.
Cleverly fights a fringe level contender named Tommy Karpency on February 25th in Wales. Karpency, 26, has faced pretty much all B level fighters his entire career with one exception his fight against Karo Murat in May 2010. Karpency lost that fight by a 12 round unanimous decision and didn’t look good in losing.
Cleverly will beat Karpency with no problem, and hopefully Froch agrees to fight Cleverly in the summer if things don’t work out well for Froch against Bute in Canada. Froch may need the Cleverly fight to turn things around with his career.
Warren wants to match Cleverly against one of the light heavyweight champions at the end of the year in a unification bout. The fighter they mostly want to take on is WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins. If he’s not available, then they might settle for fighting WBA champion Beibut Shumenov.
Comments are closed.