Nathan Cleverly seen here showing beautiful textbook form on one of his rabbit punches to the back of Shawn Hawk’s head for a knockdown By Scott Gilfoid: Using body punching with great effectiveness, WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KO’s) remained unbeaten with an 8th round TKO win over 2nd tier replacement opponent Shawn Hawk (22-3-1, 16 KO’s0 on Saturday night on the undercard of the Abner Mares vs. Anselmo Moreno fight at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The fight was stopped at 1:53 of the round.

Cleverly knocked Hawk down three times in the fight, twice in the 7th and two more times in the 8th to get the stoppage. Cleverly did land a number of ugly rabbit punches in both and the 7th and 8th rounds that I thought he should have been penalized for because the rabbit punches seemed to take a lot of the steam out of Hawk to make him a lot more manageable.

For the most part Cleverly was throwing a lot of arm punches and not showing any power. Hawk landed the harder shots but couldn’t keep up with Cleverly’s high work rate.

In the 7th, Cleverly changed it up and started going to the body and he immediately seemed to hurt Hawk. Once he had him hurt, Cleverly added a some hard head shots and was able to put Hawk down. Cleverly then put Hawk down again near the end of the round and there a moment where it looked like the fight going to be stopped. However, the referee allowed the fight to continue as the round ended.

In the 8th, teed off on Hawk and put him down again. After he made it back up, Hawk was met with a ton of shots and went down again just as the referee was stepping in to halt the fight.

There was a number of things I didn’t like about the performance besides all the ugly rabbit bit punches Cleverly landed. He didn’t show any power whatsoever other than when he landed to the body against the punching bag like Hawk. Cleverly showed little in the way of defense as he was right there to be hit each time Hawk had the inclination to throw a shot. Against someone with offensive skills, and not the 2nd tier fighter Hawk, Cleverly’s chin would have been tested all night long.

I can’t see Cleverly beating the top guys in light heavyweight division after watching this performance. Fighters like Chad Dawson and Tavoris Cloud would clean up a fighter like Cleverly. Those guys are a level above him.