By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly had to pull out of his April 28th mismatch against #4 WBO Robin Krasniqi this week with Cleverly being too ill to train for the fight. Cleverly and his trainer/father Vince Cleverly are still hoping to face WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins in the summer in Wales even without the Krasniqi stay busy/mismatch fight to excite boxing fans about a potential bout between the old warrior and the still pretty much completely untested Cleverly.

Vince told the South Wales Argus “We probably need Bernard to beat Chad Dawson now for it to be sanctioned over a mandatory defence with the WBO. The promoters Golden Boy want to make the fight so we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and leave it to Frank.”

Vince says Hopkins “Probably” needs to beat Dawson for the Cleverly-Hopkins fight to take place. Does that mean they’re entertaining the idea of Cleverly facing the LOSER of the Hopkins-Dawson fight? Wouldn’t that be kind of off putting? What is that? Face the loser?

Of course, they have to face the winner of the Hopkins vs. Dawson fight, at least that’s kind of the way things have always been done through history. Why would Cleverly want to face the loser? I mean, I know he’s been steered around his mandatory challenger the hard hitting Dmitriy Sukhotsky and faced some weak fringe contenders since he’s had the title for the past year, but Cleverly needs to do the right thing and fight the WINNER of the Hopkin-Dawson fight, not the loser. And I hate to drizzle on their parade but Dawson is going to be the winner in the Hopkins fight, so they might as well not even mention Hopkins’ name anymore because that’s not reality base.

That’s like wishing for Santa Claus to come and drop off some presents in the middle of April. It’s not happening. If they don’t like the idea of facing Dawson, and I wouldn’t blame them one bit because he’s SO much better than Cleverly on so many levels, then they need to start looking for some other bottom ranked guys for Cleverly to fight OR they can pick up where they left off and go with the inexperienced Krasniqi with his inflated record and inflated ranking.

I see Krasniqi as a step down from Cleverly’s last mismatch against fringe contender Tommy Karpency. When I say mismatch, I’m not taking about a top five quality fighter. I’m talking fringe level, a guy ranked #10, but more realistically probably better positioned at the 2nd tier level.