By Sean McDaniel: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) once again won’t be fighting his number #1 mandatory challenger after having held the World Boxing Organization title for almost a year. Cleverly, 25, will be facing #4 WBO contender Robin Krasniqi (37-2, 13 KO’s) on April 28th at the Royal Albert Hall in London, UK in what appears to be yet another mismatch going.

The WBO had already rejected the 24-year-old Krasniqi, saying that Cleverly was supposed to finally defend his WBO title against his number #1 challenger the tough Dmitry Sukhotsky. However, Cleverly’s promoter really wanted Krasniqi specifically for Cleverly and he met with the WBO committee and they agreed to let Cleverly face the light-hitting Krasniqi, with the agreement that the winner of the Cleverly-Krasniqi fight will have to face the WBO mandatory Sukhotsky within 120 days.

However, that remains to be seen whether that will happen or not, because Cleverly wants to fight the winner of the April 28th fight between Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the mandatory challenger may have to wait even longer after Cleverly beats Krasniqi, which is a forgone conclusion.

Why Cleverly’s promoter was persistent in getting Krasniqi for Cleverly is the big question. It likely ties into Krasniqi, a German based fighter, being the better money fight for Cleverly than a fight with Sukhotsky, the Russian fighter. But you have to look at the differences between the two fighters. Sukhotsky is dangerous because he can really punch and is an excellent pressure fighter. Krasiniqi is a pure boxer that moves around the ring, tries not to get hit and has very little power.

In other words, Krasniqi is made to order for Cleverly and is very little threat to beat him like Sukhotsky would. With Cleverly, you really can’t be sure what you’re going to get because he’s looked plain awful in fights against Tony Bellew and Najib Mohammedi. Cleverly doesn’t have much power and has to out-land his opponents to win. You put him in with a puncher like Sukhotsky, and you could have the workings for a Cleverly loss. But if you sidestep that fight and match him against another weaker opponent than Cleverly has a better chance to stay on top until the Hopkins or Dawson money fight at which points it’s pretty much a given that Cleverly will be slaughtered. He’s not going to beat those guys, not even if Hopkins was 50.

Not sure why the WBO has Krasniqi at number #4. None of the other sanctioning bodies even has him listed in the top 15, which is understandable because he looks very, very average. Pretty much the entirety of Krasniqi’s career has been fought against 2nd and 3rd tier fodder. Why Krasniqi has been given a high ranking by the WBO is beyond me. I don’t see anything in Krasniqi’s performances that suggest that he’s even deserving to be ranked at No.30.

It’s a good thing for Cleverly that he’s facing a guy that arguably has an inflated record like Krasniqi but bad likely bad for the boxing public, who will be seeing Cleverly in another mismatch. His last fight as quite the mismatch with Cleverly pitted against fringe contender Tommy Karpency last February in a fight that was just plain awful to watch because of how overmatched Karpency was against Cleverly.

Karpency was given a #10 ranking by the WBO, which again was a very generous ranking given how poor he’d looked in past fights. In Cleverly’s fight before that, he defended his title against #14 Tony Bellew in a fight that many boxing fans this writer included saw as a draw. That’s not good when your champion is being pitted against the bottom of the division and winning questionable decisions like that. But in matching Cleverly against Krasiqi, it definitely helps prolong Cleverly’s time at the top for a little while longer. It’a a good thing that Cleverly is finally facing a top 5 contender, but it’s a bad thing that Krasniqi hardly resembles a top five contender, can’t punch and has never fought 1s tier opposition.