By Sean McDaniel: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) did a good job of pounding out an impressive 12 round unanimous decision over American Tommy Karpency (21-3-1, 14 KO’s) on Saturday night in Cleverly’s third defense of his World Boxing Organization title at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. The judges’s scores showed you how one-sided the fight was, as they scored it 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108, giving every round of the fight to Cleverly.

Fighting in front of 5000 Welsh fans, Cleverly mixed up his punches well throwing over a 1000 punches landing a lot of them and hitting Karpency with pretty much everything but the kitchen sink in the process. Although Cleverly is known for throwing a lot of punches in his fights, he was forced to throw a little more than he usually does tonight due to Karpency constantly coming forward trying to pressure Cleverly. Karpency took a lot of punches in this fight but he kept coming back, and he fought hard enough for Cleverly to really labor to get the win. This wasn’t an effortless fight for Cleverly, but I’m not sure if he’s got the talent to beat any fighter in the top 15 effortlessly unfortunately. Karpency just wasn’t bothered in the least by Cleverly’s power shots and he didn’t mind coming forward under a hail of fighter shots in order to land his own punches.

It looked like Karpency was hurt by a right hand from Cleverly in the 6th. However, Karpency showed great recuperative powers, because he immediately got his at together after being hurt and continued to take the fight to Cleverly.

In the 8th round, Cleverly unloaded on Karpency with a blizzard of punches while the American was trapped against the ropes. However, Cleverly was still unable to badly hurt Karpency or hurt him at all with his big flurry of shots.

With this win, Cleverly and his promoter Frank Warren are looking to target the big names in the light heavyweight division – Bernard Hopkins, Chad Dawson, Beibut Shumenov, Jean Pascal and Tavoris Cloud. The likely next opponent will be Shumenov or Cloud. Cleverly’s performance against the little known Karpency wasn’t impressive enough to lure the big names and Cleverly’s lack of big names on his resume will likely hurt him in trying to get the important guys.

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Maccarinelli destroys Healy

Enzo Maccarinelli (34-5, 27 KO’s) continued to impress in turning his career around with a 2nd round retirement win over Ciaran Healy (13-18-1, 4 KO’s) in a scheduled eight round bout. Maccarinelli put Healy down with some beautiful body shots in the 2nd round. To his credit, Healy got up each time and continued to go through the motions of fighting but it wasn’t good enough on this night for him. Healy’s corner decided to throw in the towel rather than seeing him get put down for a third time in the round. The fight was stopped at 2:52 of the round, and there was a good chance that Healy could have made it out of the round. However, he wasn’t going any place in this fight. He didn’t have the power to trouble Maccarinelli nor the defense to keep from getting blasted out. In the end, it was a good thing that his corner had the referee stop the fight because it would have been brutal if he had come out for the third round.

Maccarinelli will now take on British cruiserweight champion Shane McPhilbin next month on March 23rd at the Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, United Kingdom.

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Frankie Gavin TKO 3 Kevin McIntyre

With his career on the line, unbeaten #9 WBO welterweight contender Frankie Gavin (12-0, 9 KO’s) defeated 33-year-old former British welterweight champion Kevin McIntyre (30-9, 9 KO’s) by a 3rd round TKO in a scheduled eight round bout. Gavin knocked McIntyre down with a right to the midsection resulting in the fight being halted at 2:22 of the round by Wynford Jones. Gavin punished McIntyre with body head shots in the first two rounds, and kept the pressure on trying to impress the boxing fans and his promoter. In the end, Gavin came through and got the knockout he was trying for. However, this was a step backwards from Gavin’s last opponent Curtis Woodhouse, who Gavin won a very questionable 12 round split decision over last July. I saw Gavin losing that fight. Gavin wants to be busy and be back in the ring in another five weeks for another tune-up fight. I’m not sure where he can go in the division, because I don’t think he’s going to get a shot at WBO champion Manny Pacquiao ever, and the other welterweight champions are all too good for him and would beat him. Ideally, Gavin needs to lose weight and move down to light welterweight because I can’t see him winning legitimate title unless it’s one of those phoney interim jobs. Gavin might be able to win one of those belts as long as he doesn’t have to face anyone above Woodhouse’s level, because he’d lose.

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Other action on the card:

Liam Williams PTS 4 Tommy Tolan
Liam Smith PTS 8 Paul Morby