By Scott Gilfoid: Tonight I think the boxing world is going to see a minor upset with #1 WBO Robin Krasniqi (39-2, 15 KO’s) defeating WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision at the Wembley Arena in London, UK.
I don’t see it as upset because I never rated Cleverly to begin with, but a lot of his fans and the writers may it that way. Fortunately, I have my eyes open and have seen how talented the 26-year-old Krasniqi is and I see him having far too many skills for the slow, and weak punching Cleverly to win.
This is one of the rare fights in Cleverly’s career where he’s facing a guy with about the same size as him. The 6’1 ½” Cleverly has become accustomed to being the bigger guy and that no doubt has given him a considerable advantage against the mostly poor opposition he’s been in with. T
onight, Cleverly will be facing the 6’1” Krasniqi and there’s not going to be any size advantage for the Welsh fighter nor will there be a reach advantage. Cleverly also won’t have an advantage in work rate either because Krasniqi tends to throw a lot of punches, but he throws hard shots with knockout intentions written all over them.
I don’t see Krasniqi knocking Cleverly out because he seems to have a really good chin but I do think he’s going to hurt him two or three times in this fight to where Cleverly will have to either back off or grab a hold of Krasniqi in order to survive the round.
Krasniqi is one of those late bloomer types of fighters who have gotten better as his career has progressed. He didn’t start out to be a huge puncher at the start of his career but has developed into one by learning how to use good form. He’s a perfect example of how you can turn a fighter into a much better puncher by focusing on form because his power has improved dramatically from where it was when he first started. He didn’t use his body to get the most of his shots and that kept him from getting a lot of knockouts. He now uses leverage on his shots and he’s an incredibly dangerous puncher, and I can’t see Cleverly being able to fight him toe-to-toe tonight without getting knocked out.
Once Cleverly gets a taste of Krasniqi’s power, I see him backing off and going into the safety mode rather than risking it and getting knocked out by trying to slug with him.
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