By William Mackay: According to promoter Frank Warren, he attempted to get both Tony Bellew and Carl Froch for a fight against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s), but both guys turned the fight down. Cleverly instead will be facing #9 WBO Vyacheslav Uzelkov (27-2, 16 KO’s) on October 27th at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.

Warren told thesun.co.uk “A huge purse was put to Froch to move up a weight division – which he turned down – and Bellew rejected the offer of a rematch. We had [Bernard] Hopkins lined up and then he pulled out, while [WBA light heavyweight champion Beibut] Shumenov didn’t want to come over [to the UK].”

That’s really too bad because in getting only the 33-year-old Uzelkov to fight instead of the guys that recently beat him like Shumenov and Eduard Gutknecht, Cleverly is being matched up against another relatively easy mark for his next fight on October 27th. At the same time, Uzelkov is hardly a well known star, so it’s going to be interesting to see how many boxing fans will be paying to go see this fight at the Motorpoint Arena or paying to see it on BoxNation.

It’s just another of the long line of disappointing fights for the 25-year-old Clevery since he picked up the World Boxing Organization belt outside of the ring rather than inside it last year. He’s faced Aleksy Kuziemski, Tony Bellew and Tommy Karpency since getting the WBO title. The Bellew-Cleverly fight was interesting and many people thought that Bellew deserved to get a draw out of it, but he was given a loss none the less.

It was hoped that Cleverly would give Bellew an immediate rematch because the fight was interesting to watch. But instead of fighting Bellew again, Cleverly moved on and fought the little known American Karpency last February in a painfully dull to watch 12 round decision victory.

Some boxing fans are disappointed with the choice of opposition for Cleverly since he picked up his WBO title and they’re tired of watching him fight overmatched, little known opposition and want him to finally fight someone that has a chance of beating him.