Cleverly-Karpency: When will Nathan finally defend against his mandatory challenger?

By Boxing News - 02/06/2012 - Comments

Image: Cleverly-Karpency: When will Nathan finally defend against his mandatory challenger?By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) will be making his third defense of his title on February 25th against #10 World Boxing Organization ranked contender Tommy Karpency (21-2-1, 14 KO’s), who was only recently in the past couple of weeks pushed to the No.10 spot by the WBO.

Before that, Karpency wasn’t even ranked in the top 15 by the WBO and I couldn’t understand how in the world Cleverly was being allowed to fight a guy that’s not even ranked in the top 15 by the WBO. While it’s nice that the WBO has now officially ranked Karpency at #10 well after the fight was already announced, I don’t understand is why isn’t Cleverly facing his mandatory challenger?

What’s up with that? In his last fight, Cleverly fought and beat #13 ranked Tony Bellew by a controversial 12 round majority decision last October. Now Cleverly is facing #10 Karpency, who was just now pushed to the #10 spot over arguably much better fighters such as Isaac Chilemba, Dustin Dirks, Kariz Kariuki and Vyacheslav Uzelkov.

But why isn’t Cleverly fighting his mandatory challenger? When is going to do that? How long can Cleverly go without fighting his mandatory challenger and WHY is the WBO not making him fight his mandatory? In this case, Cleverly’s #1 ranked WBO challenger is the Russian Dmitry Sukhotsky (18-1, 13 KO’s).

I consider this guy a very good fighter and a lot better than Tony Bellew and Karpency. Sukhotsky, 30, recently made easy work of Nadjib Mohammedi, stopping him in the 2nd round last October. If you don’t remember who Mohammedi is, he’s the guy that Cleverly went life and death with on December 2010, barely beating him by a close 12 round decision. Sukhotsky made easy work of Mohammdi and gave a good glimpse of why he’s ranked #1.

So why isn’t Cleverly having to defend his title against Sukhotsky, eh? How much longer will Cleverly be able to steer clear of this guy? I can’t remember seeing a champion bypass his #1 challenger repeatedly to face longer ranking guys. Cleverly has fought Bellew at #13, and now Karpency at #10. When is he going to fight a top five contender? Jurgen Brahmer may not be the WBO champion any longer but Cleverly sure isn’t setting a new standard of excellence as far as the guys he’s been fighting, has he?



Comments are closed.