By Scott Gilfoid: According to espn.co.uk, WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly 24-0, 11 KO’s) has been ordered to face his #1 WBO mandatory challenger Robin Krasniqi (38-2, 14 KO’s) by the World Boxing Organization on November 10th. That obviously isn’t going to happen with this short notice, so what we’ll likely see is Cleverly face another lower level contender in an easy fight. Cleverly will then have 30 days to start negotiations to fight Krasniqi. That’s another terrible fight for Cleverly. What a waste. He should maybe move down in weight to super middleweight because these kind of match-ups can’t be helping him.

For the November 10th date, Cleverly will be fighting at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was supposed to have been fighting American Ryan Coyne, but he won’t be able to take the fight due to contract problems with his former promoter.

Krasniqi, 25, is about as easy fight as Coyne, so I’m sure there won’t be any feet dragging on Cleverly’s part in facing this guy. I’ve seen Krasniqi fight a few times and he looks to be more of a bottom 60 fighter rather than #1 contender. It’s very odd to see a guy as average as Krasniqi ranked so highly. I can’t understand what the WBO sees in him to rank that high. It’s almost like an upside down ranking. Krasniqi looks awful.

If Cleverly’s promoter can’t find a top 15 contender for the November 10th date, then his WBO title won’t be on the line and the fight will likely be for only 10 rounds. I’m sure that’s not what they had in mind when they chose to fight on this card, and it’s hardly worth it for Showtime to televise the fight if that’s the situation. The Cleverly-Coyne fight was bad enough, but to have him fight a non-top 15 ranked contender would be really off putting if that happened.

Cleverly was previously scheduled to fight Krasniqi earlier this year in April, but Cleverly had to pull out of the fight due to an illness. At the time few boxing fans were interested in this fight. It’s likely that few people have changed their minds about this.

Cleverly badly needs to step up the level of his opposition because he’s only one decent opponent during his entire seven year pro career in facing Tony Bellew, and it’s not helping him build a fan base. Instead of facing a better known guy in his last fight, Cleverly fought Tommy Karpency. And now Cleverly is likely going to face someone along the same lines as Karpency, and possibly even worse than that on November 10th. And then the first part of next year will be lost with Cleverly having to fight Krasniqi instead of someone better known. I honestly don’t know how Cleverly can win over new fans with him fighting the likes of Krasniqi and Karpency.