By Scott Gilfoid: WBO interim light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (21-0, 10 KO’s) has been acting pretty confident lately about his chances to unseat WBO light heavyweight champion Jurgen Braehmer (36-2, 29 KO’s) next month on May 21st at the O2 Arena in Greenwich, London, England. Cleverly, 24, has been boasting about finding new power and is even gone so far as to make a 1st round knockout prediction.

It’s looking like Cleverly has gotten a little too big for his britches and may need to be knocked down a peg or two by the skillful 32-year-old Braehmer. Cleverly is a smart guy out of the ring with earning a degree in mathematics, but inside the ring he’s about to go down the road street if he tries to score a knockout against Braehmer by trying to slug it out. We saw Cleverly go life and death with his last opponent Nadjib Mohammedi last year in December, having to settle for a less than impressive 12 round decision.

I had Cleverly just nicking the fight by a tiny razor thin margin. And this Mohammedi guy isn’t even in the same class as Braehmer. I think we might be seeing Cleverly lose his ‘0’ on 5/21 and put in his place. It’s going to be sad to see another boxer get beaten, but it’s all good. A nice loss for Cleverly will be a good learning tool for him. He can then go back to the old drawing board and revamp his entire offense and change things around to become a pure boxer. It’ll be good for Cleverly to lose because he’ll come back the better for it. He should know by now that he doesn’t have the power to be a slugger and be focusing on trying to box rather than slug.