By Michael Collins: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (23-0, 11 KO’s) is hoping to get a fight with former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s) in the Summer in Wales if he can get th 34-year-old Froch to agree to the fight. Cleverly, 24, has to first get by his next challenger American Tommy Karpency (21-2-1, 14 KO’s) on February 25th at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales. This will be Cleverly’s third title defense of his World Boxing Organization belt, and he’s expected to easily win that fight against the non-WBO ranked Karpency.
Cleverly has been hoping to get a fight with 47-year-old WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins but has been waiting and waiting for the fight to happen. It’s still a possibility for 2012, but in the meantime, Cleverly would like to fight Froch immediately after the Karpency fight.
Cleverly’s promoter, Frank Warren, said this to the BBC Sport “I would like to see Nathan fight again in early June at Cardiff City’s ground in a big open-air show. If Carl Froch wants to step up a weight and fight him then I’d take that fight in a heartbeat. He’s made for Nathan. Then I’d be looking for Nathan to have a unification fight, hopefully in September against one of the other title holders.”
Normally, I would say Warren and Cleverly are probably dreaming about Froch taking a fight with him, because he’s in the thick of things in the super middleweight division. However, with Froch’s one-sided loss to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward last month and with the strong possibility for Froch to suffer yet another loss on April 14th when he faces IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute in Montreal, Canada, I think Froch may be a lot more receptive to taking that fight with Cleverly in the summer.
In fact, I think Froch may be badly in need of that fight in order to restart his career. He will have lost his two fights by then, and he struggled in the Super Six tournament, losing to Mikkel Kessler and getting what many people felt was a hometown decision against Andre Dirrell. I think Froch may actually need the Cleverly fight as a new beginning for him at light heavyweight. He’ll take care of Cleverly with no problems, because Cleverly is pretty limited. I think Froch may have a new career at light heavyweight and could make a nice run at that weight unless he gets brave and wants to fight someone like Chad Dawson. That guy would dominate Froch the same way Ward did. But, yeah, a fight against Cleverly would be nice easy one for Froch and a good one to turn things around after he loses to Bute in April.