By Scott Gilfoid: Last month former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-1, 12 KO’s) faced his first good opponent in his career in Sergey Kovalev (22-0-1, 20 KO’s) and Cleverly was then promptly stopped in the 4th round by the hard hitting Russian. Cleverly is now saying he wants to face Kovalev again in a rematch, and he wants it to be his next fight in early 2014 if Kovalev will agree to it.
I’m not sure if Cleverly should take this fight because he looked like a punching bag against Kovalev the entire short 4-round fight. About the best that Cleverly could do was throw jabs, and that wasn’t going to be enough to hold back a puncher like Kovalev.