Tavoris Cloud's Team Denies Mikkel Kessler Rumors

When Mikkel Kessler announced that he was pulling out of his fight with Robert Stieglitz on April 14th, Kessler's promoter, Kalle Sauerland, mentioned that Tavoris Cloud was a potential opponent. This announcement was completely unexpected because Cloud is a light heavyweight and he is currently pursing a fight with Karo Murat, the IBF mandatory challenger. Also Cloud is not exactly the most active fighter, only fighting about once a year probably due to being a Don King fighter.

Cloud's trainer Al Bonanni has reached out to Jake Donovan in order to address these issues.

"It's nice that [Kessler] wants to fight us. It would be a great fight in the future," noted Al Bonanni, the veteran trainer who guides Cloud's career. "But we're still moving forward with our mandatory challenger at this time. Don (King, Cloud's promoter) is negotiating the fight as we speak."

"Right now, we're locked into negotiations with (Murat)," Bonanni pointed out. "That's the promise we made the IBF when we were allowed to face Campillo, that we'd next pursue our mandatory. Unless this guy is willing to step aside to allow us to fight someone like Kessler, we have to defend our title against the mandatory challenger...In order to make that fight, we'd have to give up the title. If it were big enough financially, maybe we'd consider it. I'm not sure that the fight is, or that he'd fight us without a title on the line. It's a great fight, though."

A fight with Kessler would definitely be a big fight if it were held in Denmark. I would think that Kessler could fill a decent sized stadium and demand a large fee for television rights in Denmark and Europe. However, I doubt that Cloud would be too excited to go to Denmark considering that he has never fought outside of the US. From these statements, it doesn't seem like Cloud is willing to defend his IBF belt against Kessler and doubt Kessler would want to fight Cloud if the belt was not on the line. All these hurdles aside, would you guys be interested in a fight between Kessler and Cloud?