By William Mackay: Having been ignored in his attempts at acquiring a rematch against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly, a disgusted British light heavyweight champion Tony Bellew (17-1, 11 KO’s) has given up any hope of facing Cleverly and instead is looking at making a name for himself against other world level fighters.

Bellew said this to thesun.co.uk “I don’t need Nathan Cleverly to make a name for myself or a living. You’ve seen who he’s fighting – he’s fighting a guy ranked number 83 in the world.”

Bellew destroyed former EBU light heavyweight champion Danny McIntosh (13-3, 7 KO’s) last Friday night by a 5th round knockout at the Echo Arena, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom. The end came suddenly in the 5th when Bellew landed a big overhand right that sent McIntosh crashing to the canvas back first. McIntosh was badly hurt from the shot and laid on the canvas for quite some time with both arms stretched out making him look like a pancake. It was a good win for Bellew in a one-sided fight from start to finish. McIntosh couldn’t handle his power and was never in the fight.

Bellew should forget completely out trying to fight Cleverly again, because it’s pretty clear that Cleverly is going in another direction and there’s no interest. It would be good if Cleverly would take the fight, but I get the feeling that he’s being guided carefully by his promoter and it’s not necessarily his call alone with whom he fights. Cleverly probably should take the rematch with Bellew, because it might be a better option than facing his mandatory.

There’s really not many interesting fight for Cleverly in the division other than Chad Dawson, Mikkel Kessler and Bernard Hopkins. It’s going to be hard for Cleverly to get a fight against one of those guys because they’re the big names in the division and Cleverly is still trying to build a name for himself.