By Scott Gilfoid: It seems that former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly’s 4th round TKO loss to the talented Russian knockout artist Sergey Kovalev (22-0-1, 20 KO’s) last Saturday night in front of Cleverly’s own fans at the has negatively Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom has effected Cleverly more than what some people originally thought it would.
Cleverly, 26, is hinting that he could retire from boxing after his loss to Kovalev. Cleverly is going away on vacation, and he’s going to do a lot of soul searching to decision whether to continue fighting or wrap up his career and move onto other things. Cleverly has a math degree, and he can make a lot of money if he goes back to school to become an engineer. He doesn’t need boxing.
Cleverly said to BBC Sport “I could leave it there, or give it another go. I will have a holiday now and recover and see where I go from here and see what I can to do in life now. I will go away and live a normal life for a bit now…six weeks into that where you want to go. Your insticts tell you if you are missing boxing, or are you going to find another career path.”
I hate to say it but Cleverly doesn’t have a lot of options at 175 unless he targets WBA champion Beibut Shumenov or waits out Bernard Hopkins until he retires so that he can go after his strap.
The way that Koevalev whipped Cleverly, I don’t think it’s possible for Cleverly ever to avenge that loss against him. And if Cleverly tries to fight WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, I see Clevery getting knocked out even quicker.
Stevenson is probably too fast and powerful for Cleverly to handle. Cleverly’s young enough to wait out both Stevenson and Hopkins, and move to take one of those straps after they retire or get beaten. However, it’ll mean that Cleverly will have to bide his time as a non-world champion for 2-5 years while he waits for them to get down from their thrones.
Like I said, the best bet for Cleverly is to target Beibut Shumenov, the WBA light heavyweight champion. That guy hasn’t fought in ages, and he’s not really looked all that great recently.
If Cleverly could lose some weight, he could move down to 168 and go after George Groves and Carl Froch. I don’t know about Cleverly’s chances though. The way that Kovalev was able to dominate him, I think Groves and Froch would have a good chance of doing the same thing. You’ve got to have a little bit of power or finesse to top those guys, and I’m not sure that Cleverly has either of those attributes.
Cleverly fell into a perfect situation when he was given the WBO title outside of the ring by the World Boxing Organization after they stripped former WBO 175 lb. champion Jurgen Braehmer for not defending the strap in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, the light heavyweight division has gotten better recently, and there are fewer easy marks to pick up titles the easy way. If Cleverly wants a title now, he’s going to have take some dangerous fights once he works his way back into title contention, and there’s no guarantees that he’ll be able to win a strap.
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