Will Andrzej Fonfara finish off Nathan Cleverly’s career tonight?

By Boxing News - 10/16/2015 - Comments

fonfara64643By Scott Gilfoid: The one-time former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (29-2, 15 KOs) will pretty much have his career on the line tonight when he faces the talented and incredibly powerful #3 WBC 175lb contender Andrzej Fonfara (27-3, 16 KOs) in a do-or-die fight on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike from the beautiful UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois.

Cleverly has lost 2 out of his last 5 fights, and he’s not beaten anyone good in the last four years since 2011. I must say that things are looking pretty bleak for Cleverly’s career. A loss for Cleverly in this fight will put him in a place where I don’t think he’ll be able to dig himself out of.

The Cleverly vs. Fonfara fight card will begin starting at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT.
If Cleverly wants a world title shot, and the nice little payday that would come with a fight of that type, then he’s got to defeat the hard hitting 27-year-old Fonfara for him to move his career ahead. That’s obviously easier said than done, especially when you’ve looked as God awful as Cleverly has in his recent defeats to Sergey Kovalev and Tony Bellew.

Even if Cleverly beats Fonfara, he’s going to be put into an impossible situation of having to beat either Kovalev or Adonis Stevenson for their 175lb world titles. Cleverly seems like a nice chap, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to go more than 4 rounds with either of those two fighters. They have too much power, too much talent, and just too much athleticism for the likes of Cleverly to beat either of them. But this is neither here nor there, because I suspect Cleverly will be blasted apart into little pieces tonight by Fonfara.

YouTube video

You can think of Fonfara as the demolition man about to take apart an old building that the city wants to be obliterated so a nice shiny new building can be erected in it’s place.

Fonfara, 6’2 ½”, will have the hometown advantage with him fighting in Chicago, and the fans will no doubt be encouraging him to wipe Cleverly out fast.

Fonfara is coming off of a career best 10th round stoppage win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr last April. If you’ve seen Fonfara’s fights in the past, you’ll note that he changed his fighting style completely for that fight. Instead of him winding up on every punch to get the most power he could on each shot, he focused instead on throwing a massive amount of punches in each round.

What we discovered is that Fonfara still has incredibly good punching power even when throwing shorter punches. It’s a whole new way of fighting for Fonfara, and he now he minds one of another Kovalev. That’s bad news for Cleverly, because he clearly needs Fonfara to be vulnerable for him to win.



Comments are closed.