5 Key Questions That Will Decide Nathan Cleverly vs. Tony Bellew II

Nathan Cleverly and Tony Bellew return to the Liverpool Echo Arena tonight for a rematch three years after their first encounter.

That time Cleverly successfully defended his WBO light-heavyweight title against the Scouser by a majority decision after 12 rounds.

Last year brought an end to both the British fighters' runs at light-heavy—Cleverly dropped his belt to Sergey Kovalev, stopped mercilessly in Round 4, while Bellew lost in similarly destructive fashion to WBC champion Adonis Stevenson inside six rounds.

Both men then made the 25 pounds jump to the cruiserweight limit of 200 pounds (14 stone, 4lbs), and this year each won his first two fights at the new weight by stoppage—but not against top opposition.

The bookmakers have this as a dead-even, genuine 50-50 fight, albeit that they favour Cleverly, 27, if the fight goes to decision but Bellew, 31, if the fight is won inside the distance.

Although neither fighter seriously hurt the other in their first fight, both men have been tipping themselves by stoppage in the rematch in the heated and protracted build-up to this one.

Bellew will benefit from a big and partisan crowd in his home-town even if that was not a decisive factor last time around when Cleverly, despite being the champion, fought away from home for financial reasons—Bellew is a big ticket-seller on Merseyside.

A win here is likely to set the winner up for a world-title shot at cruiserweight while a loss will be devastating, leaving the career of the loser in no-man's land at the new weight class and maybe ending his title aspirations.

Here are the five key questions that will decide Nathan Cleverly vs. Tony Bellew II.

Light-heavyweight to cruiserweight is the biggest weight-class jump, spanning some 25 pounds, massive compared to the previous jump of seven pounds from super-middleweight to light-heavyweight.

For that reason it is not a move that many fighters make successfully, with Zsolt Erdei and Tomasz Adamek being recent examples of guys who did, winning world titles at both weights.

Inevitably, both Bellew and Cleverly claim they were drained at light-heavyweight and now feel much healthier—revitalised, even, at cruiserweight.

However, there is always the suspicion that fighters move up in weight after defeats because opportunities at the lower weight are that much harder to come by coming off a loss.

Bellew perhaps has the better argument to being weight-drained in the past as he often looked gaunt at weigh-ins and even on fight night itself. He competed at heavyweight as an amateur so relative to that he was certainly cutting weight to make the professional light-heavyweight limit.

However, at cruiserweight, Bellew has looked a little fleshy around the middle whereas—as you can see in the photo above—Cleverly looks more physically impressive carrying the extra poundage.

As the younger man, Cleverly can more plausibly claim to have simply outgrown light-heavyweight, where he competed from age 21 to 26. He was out of the ring for nine months bulking up his frame and, on the surface, looks to have gone about it the right way, adding muscle not fat.

That said, boxing is not a body-building contest, and if having the better physique was all that was required, then Frank Bruno would have been the undisputed heavyweight champion for many years.

This fight will prove who really is suited to the cruiserweight division and who can go on to challenge for world honours at the weight.

Cleverly will enter the ring with the confidence that comes from already holding a win over his rival from their 2011 meeting.

The Welshman was the clear favourite going into that fight as the reigning WBO champion and former European champion. It was only Bellew's 17th fight and a big step up in opposition for the then-British champion.

If anything, Bellew did better than expected, working off an intelligent jab to win a good share of the early rounds—he was probably ahead at the halfway stage.

But as the fight went long, Cleverly took over with his higher punch output and deeper reserves of stamina, outworking the home-town fighter to the decision.

Cleverly will look to do the same again, setting a pace that the Liverpudlian cannot match and overwhelming him with his punch variety, quicker hands and neat footwork.

It is possible that Bellew will have better stamina at cruiserweight if he was genuinely drained at light-heavyweight because there is no doubt that being underweight is weakening and energy sapping.

That could be a trump card for the Everton fan, especially if Cleverly expects that he can rely on winning the late rounds to nick a decision as he did before.

Overall, while there are plenty of reasons to suggest the rematch could go differently to the original, it is not unreasonable to predict a repeat.

For their first fight, both men were undefeated—Cleverly at 22-0, Bellew at 16-0. Since then each has been stopped once on the way to records of 28-1 and 22-2-1 respectively.

There is no doubt that having been knocked out once makes a fighter more susceptible to being knocked out again, and this explains why, although their first fight comfortably went the distance, the betting odds see it as a toss-up whether the rematch will do the same.

Neither of the fighters' KO defeats were embarrassing because Sergey Kovalev, who got to Cleverly, and Adonis Stevenson, who got to Bellew, are both serious punchers, boasting KO ratios of 80 percent or better.

The question is whether there have been long-term effects, both in terms of physiological resistance and also the psychological breach that comes from knowing you can be knocked out.

Cleverly has not been tested in his two comeback fights so there is not enough information to gauge if he has been affected.

Although Bellew ultimately finished Valery Brudov in good style by KO in Round 12, he was badly wobbled in Round 7 by the aged Russian.

Brudov is a decent fighter with decent power, but that was definitely a warning sign for the Scouser. If Brudov could hurt Bellew at the weight, then you would have to think that Cleverly, a higher-level fighter if not a puncher, has the potential to do the same.

If either guy has seriously diminished punch resistance from having been knocked out, that could prove decisive in this rematch.

After his first professional loss to Sergey Kovalev last year, Nathan Cleverly raised eyebrows by talking about potentially retiring from the sport, an unusual stance from a former world champion aged only 26.

At that time he told Boxing News (via the Daily Mail): "Will I continue boxing? Do I want to find something else to do in life? It's a matter of having a break and letting my inclinations guide me."

Clearly Cleverly ultimately decided to fight on, but Tony Bellew has seized on this period of doubt as a sign of weakness and one that his opponent is not truly committed to the sport.

On the comeback trail, Cleverly briefly trained with David Haye and George Groves' former coach Adam Booth in London but ultimately preferred to base his camp back in Wales, aided by strength and conditioning coach Darren Wilson, who is not necessarily a boxing expert.

Cleverly told Wales Online:

I struggled to settle, I decided I wanted to train at home as that's where my training camps have been—and I missed my mother's cooked dinners a bit!

Those are not quite the words of an uncompromising champion willing to make big sacrifices to return to the top.

It is possible that Cleverly's heart is no longer in the fight game and that he has returned simply because there was a good payday available to rematch Bellew, a strong opponent but not so daunting as a Kovalev or a Marco Huck.

This is not to say that Cleverly won't give his all or that he is not coming to win, but there is an element of doubt as to whether if Bellew can take him into a dark place, he really wants to be in there.

As an amateur, Tony Bellew was known as a big puncher, winning him the nickname of "Bomber" Bellew.

In nine of his first 13 pro fights, he won by stoppage, but after that he slowed down and his record now boasts 14 stoppage wins from 25 fights, including two defeats and one draw.

That is a respectable percentage but hardly that of a wrecking ball such as the likes of Sergey Kovalev, Gennady Golovkin or Wladimir Klitschko.

However, Bellew has won his two cruiserweight fights so far by KO and was landing big shots in both of those contests—which ultimately the opposition could not stand up against.

It is possible that the extra weight has significantly improved Bellew's punch power, and he is once more the destroyer his amateur career suggested he could be.

Going back to Cleverly's loss to "Krusher" Kovalev, the Welshman said:

From the first round, I knew if he caught me clean it was highly likely I would go. Even the shots on the gloves and the shoulder, the impact was really heavy. It was clear to me from the first couple of punches that when this guy landed I would be in trouble.

The experience of sharing the ring with Kovalev was a harrowing one, and there is the question of whether the Welshman has fully recovered psychologically.

Thinking that you are in trouble in the first round of a fight is not the thought pattern of an out-and-out winner, and Cleverly did unravel quite quickly against the Krusher.

While Bellew was not as big a hitter as the Russian at light-heavyweight, with nearly an extra two stone of weight he may now be in that league, and that could decide the outcome of this fight if he lands clean.

All fighter records from BoxRec.