By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) will be trying to put on a favorable first impression in his November 10th fight in the United States against American Ryan Coyne (21-0, 9 KO’s) on Showtime at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California.
Technically, this is the 25-year-old Cleverly’s second time fighting in the U.S, but this is really the first time because his bout four years ago in 2008 against someone named Antonio Baker (7-9) received no air time or any publicity to speak of. This fight against the 30-year-old Coyne will at least be televised on Showtime.
According to Dan Rafael, the Cleverly vs. Coyne will be shown to the U.S fans, although I won’t be surprised in the least if it’s skipped over so the focus can be on the arguably much more important fights on the card between Abner Mares vs. Anselmo Moreno, Alfredo Angulo vs. Raul Casarez and Leo Santa Cruz vs. TBA. My guess is the Cleverly vs. Coyne fight will only have brief clips shown to the U.S fans rather than the entire fight. There’s only so many fights that can actually receive air time and it’s usually around three, so I think the Cleverly-Coyne fight will get excluded.
Coyne said to RingTV “This is a fight I like. I favor the match up and it’s a fight I know I can win. No disrespect to Nathan, because he’s a great champion, but I know I have the ability to beat him.”
Having seen more than enough of Coyne’s fights to pass judgement on this match-up, I don’t think he has a prayer of beating Cleverly. I know Coyne has a ranking of #2 WBA and #10 WBC, but I see those rankings as being terribly inflated. To me, Coyne looks like a top 70 fighter and no better than that. Why those sanctioning bodies have this guy ranked so high is beyond me, because he just looks like a slow fighter, with short arms, mediocre power and poor defensive skills. Like I said before, I see him around the same talent level as Cleverly’s last opponent Tommy Karpency. Actually, I think Karpency is the better fighter, and I don’t see Karpency as being a top 15 contender.
For some reason Cleverly has been matched incredibly softly during his career, and it’s obviously not helped him in him winning over boxing fans. Initially, boxing fans didn’t seem to mind that he was still facing weak opposition well into his career, but now it’s forlorn with him facing obscure guys over and over again instead of dangerous opposition like Dawid Kostecki, Isaac Chilemba, Chad Dawson, Beibut Shumenov, Denis Grachev, to name just a small handful. The one guy that Cleverlyd did face that was halfway decent was Tony Bellew, and you can’t make an argument that Cleverly didn’t deserve a win over him last year in his 12 round majority decision win last October.
If Coyne is going to have any kind of chance of winning this fight he’s going to have to take the fight to Cleverly and try to dent his chin with a big shot. The problem Coyne has is he’s not a big puncher, and he doesn’t have the kind of game that will lead to victory. There’s always a chance, but I just see Coyne as another easy guy that was picked out to keep Cleverly winning.
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