By Scott Gilfoid: After an easy 12 round unanimous decision win over #11 WBO ranked contender Tommy Karpency last Saturday night, WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) will be back in action in two months on April 28th at the Royal Albert Hall in London in what would be the first boxing match in there since Danny Williams fought Julius Frances in 1999.

It’s small 5000 seat venue, so it’s not as if we’re talking about a huge arena or anything, but for people that are into the whole nostalgia type of thing maybe it’s good. I wouldn’t care. Why bother? Put it in a modern venue and put a good opponent in with Cleverly for a change and maybe it would sell more tickets in a bigger venue than this.

The April 28th fight for Cleverly will take place on the same night as the U.S clash between WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson. Cleverly’s promoter Frank Warren is hoping to get the winner of that fight to take on Cleverly in a unification bout in the summer in Wales. Both Warren and Cleverly prefer a fight against the 47-year-old Hopkins rather than the much younger, quicker, stronger, more skilled Dawson. I really don’t think Hopkins is going to beat Dawson, and if you saw their previous fight, it didn’t look good for Hopkins during the two rounds of action.

Supposedly, Warren and Cleverly are open to facing the winner of the Hopkins-Dawson bout, but I have a strong suspicion that they’ll take a pass if Dawson is the one that comes out on top in the Hopkins-Dawson fight. Dawson is a really, really match-up to the extreme for Cleverly. He’s not just little better than Cleverly, he’s a lot better in my estimation. Hopkins might be shot enough for Cleverly to outwork him. He certainly looked shot in the two rounds of action against Dawson last October, but then again even a shot Hopkins is probably more than good enough to beat a limited fighter like Cleverly. But I don’t see it even being open for discussion because Hopkins isn’t going to beat Dawson, and if you think he is then you need to watch the Dawson-Hopkins fight again because Hopkins looked terrible in that fight.

Anyway, enough of the Cleverly vs. Hopkins-Dawson fantasy talk. What I want to know is WHO will Cleverly be fighting on April 28th? In his last two fights, we’ve seen Cleverly beat #13 WBO contender Tony Bellew by a controversial 12 round decision and then last weekend, Cleverly beat #11 WBO Tommy Karpency. Okay, so we’ve got a #13 and #11 contenders back to back, so I would assume that Cleverly will have to fight his #1 contender for his April 28th fight, I hope. The #1 WBO contender is Dmitry Sukhotsky, a good fighter with an excellent right hand. He’s a huge improvement over the guys Cleverly’s been facing and that includes Bellew. I guess I’m not surprised why Cleverly hasn’t defended his title against this guy because he’s deadly with his right hand isn’t some kind of fodder opponent that Cleverly can easily beat. I so, so surprised if Cleverly faces Sukhotsky next. My guess is Cleverly’s next opponent will be dug up from the near bottom of the WBO like the last two.