By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KO’s) has a big dream of beating his scheduled March 16th opponent German Robin Krasniqi (39-2, 15 KO’s) and then facing 48-year-old Bernard Hopkins in a unification bout later on in the year if Hopkins can get past IBF light heavyweight champion Tavoris Cloud on March 9th at the Barclays Arena in Brooklyn, New York.
Cleverly said he was close to getting a fight with Hopkins before the World Boxing Organization ordered him to fight his #1 mandatory Krasniqi instead.
Cleverly said to thesun.co.uk “It was gutting. The deal was in place. Everything had been agreed and we were ordered to fight Krasniqi instead. It would be a great fight. Hopkins fights Tavoris Cloud for the IBF and provided he wins that, and I get through mine, I am sure it can be made and it would be a great unification fight.”
I think Cleverly shouldn’t count his chickens before they’ve hatched. He may not beat Krasniqi because this guy looks to me to be the best fighter Cleverly has ever faced before.
Cleverly barely beat fringe contender Tony Bellew in October 2011, and Krasniqi is better than Bellew in my mind. He looks better, fights better and has much better hand speed and stamina. I think Cleverly is going to have a lot of problems with Krasniqi and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Cleverly lose that fight.
I like Hopkins a lot; he’s been a great fighter during his long career. However, I don’t see Hopkins beating Cloud. I think Hopkins has bit off more than he can chew in this fight, and I see this as a bad style match-up for Hopkins at this point in his career. He doesn’t better against guys that fight in spurts instead of ones that throw a lot of punches and put a lot of pressure on him like Joe Calzaghe did.
Cloud is capable of throwing 80-100 punches per round for 12 rounds. Hopkins would be lucky to be able to throw half of that total. I think Cloud is going to outwork Hopkins and take a decision.
If Cleverly wants to fight a unification bout bad enough then he’ll agree to fight Cloud for that honor, but somehow I don’t think he will. It would be too much risk for not enough gain for Cleverly. Cloud doesn’t have a big fan base and he’s got more than enough talent to beat Cleverly, so I don’t see that fight happening.
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