By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KO’s) doesn’t appear to be in any kind of rush to face a quality opponent that can really test. He’s thus far defended his WBO title four times and he’s not come close to fighting a good opponent yet that had a real chance of beating him. The 25-year-old Cleverly will continue that trend in his next fight on March 16th against his mandatory challenger Robin Krasniqi (39-2, 15 KO’s) in the UK at still to be determined venue.

The 25-year-old Krasniqi has a lot of fights on his resume for someone as young as him. However, his resume is one of the weakest you’ll ever see. Five of Krasniqi’s opponents were making their pro debut, and 14 of his opponents had losing records, meaning they’ve lost more fights than they’ve won. It’s just a dreadful resume from top to bottom, and you might as well consider him a fighter with a 0-0 record because his victories have worthless his entire career because he’s not anyone.

This is a mandatory defense so it’s not Cleverly’s fault that he’s facing this soft opponent, but you can’t say that with his other title defenses against Aleksy Kuziemski, Tony Bellew, Tommy Karpency and Shawn Hawk. Those have been weak opponents, apart from Bellew. He’s decent but hardly a great fighter.

Cleverly is hoping to get a fight with 48-year-old Bernard Hopkins or a unification bout against IBF champ Tavoris Cloud or WBA champ Beibut Shumenov after the Krasniqi fight. I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s one thing saying you want those fights but quite another thing to actually get them.

I’d be very surprised if Cleverly faced any of those guys because that would require for him to leave the safe confines of the UK to fight in the United States, and I really don’t see Cleverly doing that for a fight against one of those guys. I know he traveled to the U.S to fight 2nd tier fighter Shawn Hawk recently, but that’s not a dangerous opponent by any means. It was another fodder guy for Cleverly.

I think Cleverly won’t get any of those fights he’s supposedly looking for, and I expect his next fight after the Krasniqi bout will be against a bottom 15 type contender like Mark Flanagan.