Nathan Cleverly Knocks off Tommy Karpency

Nathan Cleverly stressed before Saturday's fight that Tommy Karpency was no easy opponent.

Karpency was a hungry fighter heading into the biggest fight of his life, and you could bet he was training like it.

Saturday's light heavyweight title fight began as Cleverly expected, with Karpency applying pressure from the beginning and showing the fearlessness one would expect from a driven challenger.

As the fight wore on, Cleverly exerted his dominance as only an undefeated champion would. One of Cleverly's many advantages coming into the fight was his experience against much better boxers than Karpency.

That showed as each round wore on, Karpency's determination being outweighed by Cleverly's sheer talent.

Cleverly's defense has been questioned in his most recent fights, so there was a chance that Karpency could land a big shot and knock him to the canvas. But Cleverly, with his stamina and continuous barrage of punches, eventually became too much for Karpency.

Cleverly has never had overwhelming power, but one of the reasons he beat Tony Bellow was because of his style of boxing, finding ways to land crispier shots in the later rounds. He did the same again against Karpency as only a boxer by the name of Cleverly would.

In the end, Karpency gave fans what they expected, a challenger fighting for an upset who at least made things interesting against the undefeated Cleverly.