By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-1, 12 KO’s) revealed tonight that he’s thinking about moving up to the cruiserweight division rather than sticking it out at light heavyweight following his 4th round destruction at the hands of Sergey Kovalev last August.
Cleverly said he’s at 14 stone [196 lbs] right now. Cleverly may weigh as much as a heavyweight, but he looked puffy in the face like he’s put on some flab since his last fight. Cleverly’s not like a solid cruiserweight. He looks more like a fat light heavyweight right now rather than a genuine cruiserweight.
Cleverly would have to put on more muscle for him to fight at cruiserweight because a lot of those guys drain down from 210-220 lbs. to fight at the cruiserweight limit of 200. Cleverly would be giving up weight each time he fights unless he were to bulk up.
Cleverly was dropped twice by the hard hitting Russian and made to look like a weak rag doll before the slaughter was finally halted in the 4th round.
It’s sort of surprising that Cleverly is ready to quit on the light heavyweight division so quickly, because he recently mentioned wanting to face Kovalev in an immediate rematch to try and avenge his defeat, but it looks like something has put Cleverly off of that idea. Who knows? Maybe Cleverly sat down with a good cup of coffee and watched a replay of how easily Kovalev destroyed him. Any one watching that fight would see the futility of Cleverly ever getting back in the ring with Kovalev because he’s too weak for the Russian fighter.
Cleverly said that if he fought Kovalev again, he would use a lot more movement to try and avoid him. I’m not sure if that would work any better than what Cleverly was doing because Kovalev was quicker on his feet, and he would have been able to easily cut the ring off to get to the tall, slender Cleverly.
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