By Scott Gilfoid: Earlier on Tuesday, the WBO nixed the idea of WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) facing #4 WBO Robin Krasniqi (37-2, 13 KO’s) on April 28th at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington, London, UK. WBO President Francisco Valcarcel said he won’t sanction the fight because Cleverly is due up to face his mandatory challenger Dimitry Sukhotsky next.

The WBO gave Cleverly permission to fight Tommy Karpency, #10 WBO, in his last fight with the agreement that Cleverly face his mandatory challenger – Sukhotsky – within 120 days after that. But with Cleverly’s promoter now looking to match Cleverly against the badly inexperienced Krasniqi, it seems like they’re straying from what the WBO wanted them to do. As of now, the WBO is saying no to the fight, but Cleverly’s promoter is said to be in talks with the WBO to try and get the Krasniqi-Cleverly fight permission to move ahead.

My question is this: Why is Cleverly being steered around Sukhotsky? Is there a lack of confidence in Cleverly’s ability to get by this opponent? I don’t see why Cleverly didn’t fight Sukhotsky in Cleverly’s last fight because he took on Karpency, a fighter that nobody wanted to see Cleverly fight. There was no demand for that fight because Karpency was a fringe contender at best. So why isn’t Cleverly being matched against Sukhotsky now? Like Karpency, nobody knows who Krasiqi is in the UK, and although he fights out of Germany, he doesn’t have a big fan base there.

There’s no reason for Cleverly to fight Krasniqi other than him being a weaker puncher than Sukhotsky and an easier mark. Is that what the idea is to look for easy marks for Cleverly? We saw how bad he looked against Bellew in barely beating a bottom level fringe contender. Cleverly looked like a paper champion in that fight and not worthy of holding a world title. And then when he again fought another fringe contender in Karpency, it started making people wonder what’s going on with him. Now they’re looking to match him up against a guy in Krasniqi who has an incredibly inflated record AND ranking.

All of Krasniqi’s wins have come against 2nd and 3rd opposition. How a fighter with zero experience against 1st tier opposition can be given a #4 ranking by the WBO is beyond me. And what’s even sadder is he’s picked out for Cleverly’s next fight. This just looks like milking of a title. It’s the wrong way to go about trying to build Cleverly up to face the winner of the April 28th rematch between Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson. Not only does it keep Cleverly from winning fans, it also won’t get him ready for what he’s going to experience if he were to face the winner of that fight.

Let me tell you, Cleverly won’t get the winner of the Hopkins-Dawson fight because it’s going to be Dawson and he will NEVER fight in the UK, and I can’t see Cleverly coming to the U.S to take a beating from Dawson because it won’t draw flies. No one knows who Cleverly is in the U.S and he’ll just end up getting clowned by Dawson but without the big gate that Cleverly is likely hoping to get against the winner of the Hopkins-Dawson fight.