Will Krasniqi end Cleverly’s title milking run?

By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) makes yet another non-mandatory defense of his title on April 28th against Robin Krasniqi (37-2, 13 KO’s) in a rare fight at the Royal Alberto Hall, Kensington, in London, UK. Krasniqi, who has never fought a quality 1st tier opponent before despite having an inflated record and ranking, has a real opportunity here to end the title milking run for Cleverly.

This is the 25-year-old Krasniqi’s big chance to fight above is talent level and get a big win in the UK, and bring some badly needed new blood to the WBO light heavyweight belt holder. Cleverly has done a horrible job of making improvements over the previous WBO champion Jurgen Braehmer, who also had problems with not facing mandatory challengers or taking on interesting opponents.

Cleverly was given the WBO strap last year by the WBO after Braehmer failed to make their fight due to an injury. But it looks like Cleverly has inherited Braehmer’s old ways, because he’s thus far not gotten close to defending against his mandatory challenger Dmitry Sukhotsky. We’ve seen instead Cleverly face Aleksy Kuziemski, the #4, Tony Bellew, #14, and Tommy Karpency, #10.

None of them have been interesting fights and Cleverly was mighty lucky to beat fringe contender Bellew. I had it a draw. After the Karpency mismatch, Cleverly was supposed to fight his mandatory, but his promoter Frank Warren spoke to the WBO to get permission for Cleverly to fight Krasniqi instead. It’s thought that Cleverly is supposed to fight Sukhotskiy after the Krasniqi fight.

However, that doesn’t appear to be the case because Cleverly is talking about a dream unification fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins in Wales in the summer. It’s a dream fight because Hopkins has little chance of getting by Chad Dawson on April 28th. It could be that Cleverly will instead face the loser of that fight so he can try and get Hopkins’ scalp for his resume instead of a loss against Dawson. Cleverly would have no chance against Dawson. He might against Hopkins, who looked shot in his last fight.