Cleverly: I’d have too much speed for Froch

By Boxing News - 02/23/2012 - Comments

Image: Cleverly: I'd have too much speed for FrochBy Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) faces another lower ranked contender on Saturday night in Tommy Karpency (21-2-1, 14 KO’s) instead of a top five contender. Cleverly faced #13 WBO ranked Tony Bellew in his last fight last October, and now facing #10 Karpency. Now telling when Cleverly will finally face a top five opponent. He says he wants super middleweight Carl Froch, but not sure how he would be allowed to take the fight given that Froch isn’t even ranked in the light heavyweight division.

Cleverly said this about how he would do against Froch: “Carl’s tough, has a granite chin so it’d likely be a distance fight but I just think I’d have too much speed and movement.”

Let me get this straight: Cleverly barely beats #13 ranked Bellew by a very, very questionable decision and now Cleverly thinks he can beat Froch no problem? That’s actually quite funny. Cleverly barely beat Najib Mohammaedi in December 2010. I’m sorry, but Cleverly would never beat Froch, but I guess you can’t blame him for trying to get the payday out of it. But it’s not going to happen because Cleverly isn’t doing anything to build his own name up by facing quality fighters. He should be fighting the big names or at least top five contenders rather than pooling from the bottom.

Karpency wasn’t even ranked in the top 15 by the WBO until well after the fight had been signed. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen before and it’s disappointing. Karpency is someone that is vulnerable, someone that Cleverly can actually beat without going life and death like he did against #13 Bellew. And as for Bellew, he’s not in the picture for a rematch with Cleverly any time soon, as Cleverly is talking about a big summer fight against some dream big names like Bernard Hopkins, Tavoris Cloud, Beibut Shumenov, Jean Pascal and Chad Dawson. Let me be the first to get this out there: Hopkins, Dawson, Cloud and Pascal likely won’t bother taking this fight because there’s no upside and they’re probably not going to want to risk getting jobbed by coming to the UK to fight Cleverly. Dawson won’t get selected because he’s someone that Cleverly already said he’s not ready for. Shumenov wants the fight but he already said it has to take place in the United States in Las Vegas. So, in other words, he probably won’t get the fight either. Frankly, I don’t see Cleverly fighting any of those guys in the Summer. Instead, I can see him facing one of the near bottom ranked contenders.



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