So Clottey is going gradually move up to Middleweight

The way I see it is, Joshua Clottey fights at Welterweight because he holds a ridiculous strength advantage over anybody he faces. He is a strong ****ing dude. With his size at 147, he can put his hands up over his face and block punches all day because people simply don't have the strength to break through his guard.

Watch his fight with Pacquaio for the best example of this (because Pacquiao is the opposite at 147) - Pacquiao was peppering Clottey with shots all night but struggled to get anything through his gloves simply because Clottey was so much stronger than Manny, who is likely the smallest boxer fighting currently at Welterweight. Cotto, who is a strong Welterweight himself, also struggled to get punches through Clottey's tight guard. On the other hand, when they fought Pacquiao, Pacquiao would try to put his guard up and both Clottey and Cotto would effortlessly slap his arms out of the way to land punches up the middle.

The higher Clottey moves up in weight, the smaller his strength advantage becomes and he will have less and less success unless he makes some drastic changes to his style. I see him having the same issues as Ricky Hatton did when he tried to move up - both were guys who won fights because of tremendous size and strength advantages at their ideal weights. When Hatton moved up, his bull rush/wrestle/maul strategy didn't work because at 147 the fighters can push him right back.

At 154 Clottey might still be the strongest guy in the division, but people will be able to break his guard down eventually. At 160 he would stand no chance at all.

 

He should do just fine