Cleverly has to settle for Uzelkov after Froch, Bellew, Shumenov and Hopkins fights failed to materialize By Marcus Richardson: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (24-0, 11 KO’s) is having to settle for a fight against #9 WBO Vyacheslav Uzelkov (27-2, 16 KO’s) on October 27th instead of much bigger fights against Carl Froch, Bernard Hopkins, Tony Bellew and Beibut Shumenov. Cleverly’s promoter Frank Warren attempted to line up a fight between Cleverly and each of those fighters but they either showed no interest in facing him or they backed out.

Warren said to thesun.co.uk “A huge purse was put to Froch to move up a weight division — which he turned down — and Bellew rejected the offer of a rematch. It’s proved frustrating. We had Hopkins lined up and then he pulled out, while Shumenov didn’t want to come over.”

Cleverly and the 33-year-old Uzelkov will be meeting up at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It’ll be a home fight more or less for the 25-year-old Cleverly, although he probably won’t need the cheering from his fans in order to get past Uzelkov. All it’ll take is a good chin to hold up under Uzelkov’s occasional big right hand shots and a steady workrate to beat him down.

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by Geoffrey Ciani – Over the course of a sixteen month period beginning in June 2009, I conducted a series of surveys that all began with a very simple question: Who are the ten best heavyweights of all time? While contemplating my own list of top heavyweight pugilists, I decided gathering the input of others might help display a more accurate portrayal of what a ‘true’ top 10 list should look like. Now of course this is not an exact science by any means. In fact, quite the opposite, it is an extremely subjective topic that is often skewed by personal bias, differences of opinion, individual tastes and preferences, and most importantly the absence of a universally agreed upon criteria with which to judge past fighters. Even with these inherent obstacles playing their natural role, however, we can still establish some degree of consensus.

The guidelines were simple. I had every person who voluntarily participated in each survey provide me with a chronological list of who they considered to be the ten best (heavyweights, middleweights, etc) in boxing history. Ties were not permitted, just a straight-forward list from one to ten. I then used a weighted-points system to assign values to fighters based on where they appeared on each individual’s list. First place votes received 25 points. Second place votes were worth 15 points, third place votes were 12, and fourth and fifth place votes were worth 10 and 8 points respectively. After that, the point differential was constant, with sixth place votes getting 5 points, seventh place votes getting 4, eighth getting 3, ninth place 2, and tenth place 1.

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