By Scott Gilfoid: If you saw WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-1, 12 KO’s) get stopped tonight by Sergey Kovalev (22-0-1, 20 KO’s) in the 4th round, you might be wondering why the referee Terry O’Connor didn’t officially stop the fight in the 3rd round after Cleverly had been knocked down twice.
Shortly after the second knockdown, it looked like O’Conner was in the act of stopping the fight, but then he let it go on. It seemed like an odd move, because it looked clearly like the referee was waiving off the fight, but then bell rung a second later, and the referee let the fight continue. It was very strange.
Thankfully, the referee not stopping the fight in the 3rd didn’t have any change in the outcome of the fight other than causing Cleverly to take a little more punishment in getting stopped a round later. But it was still unsettling to have the fight continued when the referee seemed to be stopping it. I guess referees can change their minds.
Cleverly’s corner should have halted the fight in between rounds. There was no way that Cleverly was going to be able to come out for the 4th round, and have any real chance of surviving. Why didn’t Cleverly’s corner call a halt to the fight? By letting their fighter Cleverly out for the 4th round, it only meant that he had to eat more crushing right hands from Kovalev.
It was a good thing that the referee did the right thing to step in and stop the fight after Kovalev knocked Cleverly down in the 4th, because I think Cleverly would have kept getting up until the point where he couldn’t beat the 10 count. He didn’t know how to quit, and his corner didn’t do the job for him by throwing in the towel.
With this win, Kovalev is on top of the world. HBO is going to really love this fight, and it’s going to really help make him a star in the United States. Now all Kovalev needs is to fight a recognizable opponent that casual boxing fans have heard of like Bernard Hopkins, Jean Pascal, Tavoris Cloud or Adonis Stevenson. Anyone of those guys would be a great fight for Kovalev.
Chad Dawson still needs to come back from his 1st round knockout loss to Stevenson; otherwise I would have included Dawson on the list for Kovalev.
As for Cleverly, he needs to go back to the drawing board, and be matched up against fighters that don’t have a lot of power. I think Cleverly would do well against someone like Andrzej Fonfara or Eduard Gutknecht. Those guys aren’t punchers, and I think Cleverly would stand a good chance of beating both of them.
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