ON Saturday night Britain’s undefeated WBO light heavyweight champion will defend his title on a packed bill and to a live TV audience in America.

This boxer, let us not forget, was already the first Welshman in 20 years to fight over the Pond and is also one of the only fighters I’ve ever heard of to achieve his success despite dedication to academia, this particular boxer being one with a degree in Mathematics.

The fight in Los Angeles will hopefully help his efforts to connect with US fight fans, to potentially open up opportunity and big fights for the coming years where this world champion, still young, should be hitting his peak.

He could tangle with Bernard Hopkins, Tavoris Cloud, even domestic rival Carl Froch, the list is endless, certainly opportunities for major fights positively dwarfing those available to Joe Calzaghe way back when.

Yet, there will be some that don’t even know who I am referring to. And of those who do know who I am talking about, how many truly consider Nathan Cleverly to be one of the brightest prospects in British sport?

That’s exactly what he is, a jewel in the crown and potentially our next boxing superstar, but Cleverly’s status in the sporting landscape of Britain is on the periphery. If David Haye is London, Cleverly is Basingstoke.

Who will stay up until the early hours on Saturday to watch the fight on a subscription-boxing channel? The answer is not many, if any.

Even stranger than Cleverly’s lack of recognition and appreciation to anyone outside the category of ‘die hard boxing fan’ is the fact that even within the sport, Cleverly’s remains a star yet to be discovered. He is a boxer for whom questions on his ability outweigh evidence that he is the real deal in the eyes of many, many experts. And apparently, he’s had a “disastrous” year.

Now, on the one hand it’s hard to argue Cleverly’s progress isn’t as rapid fire as he’d like. His opponent on Saturday, Shawn Hawk, hardly quickens the pulse (though it does give your fingers a workout as you google ‘Who is Shawn Hawk?’ There wasn’t too much to be said for previous opponent Tommy Karpency either, other than the fact he was a smashing kid with more politeness and respect in his little finger than the last gaggle of England football captains combined.

But it’s not enough. We know it’s not, so does Cleverly. You can’t define a legacy by beating two guys a year nobody has heard of. Joe Calzaghe did that for half a decade and he too was greeted with, at best, derision and, at worst, complete and utter ambivalence.

Perhaps it’s symptomatic of Cleverly’s plight that even in offering a defence of his talent and how he should be valued, I’m mentioning Calzaghe repetitively.

And it’s not just because I ghost wrote his dad’s autobiography, out now in all good shops (sorry!), but because a link to Joe is inextricable for Cleverly, an inescapable millstone round his neck.

Cleverly might be a world champion, but in the eyes of most within the sport he’s merely Joe’s former stablemate and the yardstick to measure his career will always be comparisons with his mentor.

That’s totally unfair, but that’s boxing. Being the new Joe is Cleverly’s hook. It afforded him opportunities early in his career and now it’s a lazy comparison he’ll constantly just have to deal with. Go to any Cleverly press event and, nine times out of ten, there will be Joe questions. He’s more than used to it.

But it’s high time we began judging Nathan not on his relative ability compared with Calzaghe or by the fact he’s not fighting people we’d match him with.

Cleverly proved by travelling to Liverpool to defend his title against Tony Bellew in Bellew’s backyard that he doesn’t lack in desire or a belief to prove he’s the best.

Cleverly also has one of the most exciting in-ring styles you could wish to see – every fight is a potential war – and that won’t change either.

So my message is simple, believe in the boy who has the potential to be the next Gwent fighter to be a boxing superstar.

Let’s hope in 2013, Cleverly’s reputation catches up to his accolades.