Nathan Cleverly's Defence.

My Nana would be an improvment on Vince. No reason to go to the US. Jimmy Tibbs, Oliver Harrison would be good trainers for Cleverly. Also Lee Beard.

 

Pretty **** to be honest, and going to Roach wouldn't improve his defence all that much.

It's hardly surprising, considering that all he appears to do is slap the **** out of some pads that his dad can barely hold properly, then get sprayed with some water before doing it all over again.

The lad has lots of natural ability, he's got fast hands, he's got plenty of stones (see the Murat fight :yep) and can take a decent shot too.

He's also got below average punch technique, worse than useless footwork and doesn't have great ring IQ.

Bellew confused him pretty badly with his jab and footwork, Clev showed plenty of stones to come back into the fight and make it pretty close - though I still had him behind at the end.

The Murat performance was an amazing one, it was a hard fight for a lad who was relatively inexperienced, and after a couple of dodgy rounds he just bludgeoned the guy into submission - it was like watching a Nigel Benn fight but without the one punch knockout power.

We've also had the stinkers against Karpency and co.... :-(

My major concern with him is that he's quite happy to get where he's got to - he's a smart lad as we keep being told and probably has aspirations after boxing, and it's only five years ago that he was widely considered to be little more than a domestic prospect at best.

It'd just be such a waste if he didn't fulfill that potential, even if he got stretched a couple of times by elite fighters, there's no reason why he can't become a solid top 3-5 fighter if he makes some adjustments to his game.

Right now, he needs to be fighting those 2nd & 3rd tier guys, because otherwise he'd be embarrassed. Talk of Froch, Kessler, Hopkins etc needs to be put on hold, for a while yet at least.

 

He should just retire, slope off with Vorderman take his Basshunter cd's and ****ing hairband with him and remove himself from public view.

 

For a minute there thought you was talking about Degale

 

:rofl :deal

 

:happy:deal

 

That worked.

 

Honour your ban bet

 

i don't think many people over here would miss him if he went to the states.

 

His poor defence is IMO not how he holds his guard.

It is more down to his footwork which for a guy of his callibre is very poor.

He gets himself into positions where he is more or less defenceless due to his feet.

This coupled with the lack of power (Which may not be unrelated) will be the main reason why he will always struggle at the top level.

Hopkins is a gamble worth taking for Frank as if they catch Hopkins with the aid of father time it would be a massive scalp for Nathan and propel him into the big time.

However with B-Hops nouce he really could trap Clev in some bad spots and put it on him.

Nathan would be relying on work rare alone to get the job done which may work.