Boxing Cleverly.. greater than the sum of his parts.

Byline: Oliver Holt

I SPENT two hours yesterday morning in the company of Nathan Cleverly, a fighter who might be world light heavyweight champion this time next year.

I'd been hanging out with Britain's hottest boxing prospect for less than five minutes when I discovered something you don't usually glean from sitting with a guy who uses his fists for a living.

If P(x=c) = 1 then Gx(s) = Es x = (1-p) + ps.

That's what the slightly dishevelled little professor with the Russian accent scribbled furiously on the chalkboard in front of us. And who was I to disagree.

So I sat there next to Cleverly in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University and listened to the next 50 minutes of the lecture on Stochastic Models for Insurance.

A couple of times, the British and Commonwealth champ made valiant whispered efforts to help me decipher small branches from the jungle of figures being scrawled on the board by the perspiring Big Brain at the front.

But it was futile. So I flicked through the schedule for the final year of Cleverly's BSc course in Mathematics instead. If I stuck around for the afternoon, I could squeeze in new lectures on Fluid Dynamics or Numerical Solutions of Elliptic Differential Equations.

The professor scribbled faster. Cleverly made notes. I let my mind wander. Towards broader dilemmas involving simpler maths.

Like what killed more brain cells - Cleverly getting clouted a few times in the ring or me necking down all the dead drinks I could get my hands on at the end of another heavy night when I was a student in Cardiff 20 years ago? I didn't know the answer to that either.

Cleverly leaned over. "What I find amazing," he said, staring at the blizzard of numbers on the board, "Is the way these formulas originated, how they actually created them. It's mindboggling." I grunted.

The clock on the wall edged closer and closer to 10.50am. Release time.

The Big Brain scrubbed the board clean again and filled it with one final climactic flurry of letters, numbers and squiggly things. And then it was over.

"Manage to keep up?" asked Cleverly, who is in the final year of his three-year degree course. His smile said he knew the answer was the same one he'd have got if he'd said "fancy a fight?"

I tried to put one on him anyway. How come a bloke as bright as him spent half his life risking getting his head caved in? He saw that one coming like a drunk's haymaker.

Cleverly by name. Cleverly by nature. Clever Boy Cleverly, they call him. Twenty-two years old, 17 fights and 17 wins. So he had his answer ready.

If there came a point when he started getting hit, he'd get out before he got hurt. He'd move into finance. Maybe a job in the City.

Or maybe he'd become an academic. Do a few more years' maths. He's on for a 2.2 at the moment but he's aiming for a 2.1.

Maybe he'd get into accountancy, he said. He already finds his maths useful for handling the money he's starting to earn. A fighter who knows how to manage his money - Cleverly is Don King's worst nightmare.

But if he's convinced he's going to be world champion, what's the point in pursuing his maths? Why not just jack it in like everybody else would have done by now?

It's not like being good at algebra will help you in the ring when your opponent comes out swinging, is it? It's not like the two things complement each other.

The Welshman, born in Caerphilly, paused. "Well, it's not the mathematical element you can transfer into the ring," he said. "It's not working out angles. But in an exam, when you're working out complex maths problems and thinking on the spot, that transfers into the ring.

"It's learning to work out an opponent, learning to think there and then instinctively, which you have to do in maths. If you're used to working something out in the classroom, your mind doesn't freeze under pressure when you're in the ring."

Sometimes, the two things get in the way of each other. In his first two years in Cardiff, he was only a four-round fighter so he could afford to pursue a student lifestyle.

"The halls of residence where I lived were like one big holiday camp," he said. Now he's a championship boxer, fighting 12 rounds, tipped to become the next big thing in Britain by judges astute as Barry McGuigan and things are different.

He lives by himself. Doesn't drink. Trains three times a day. Sometimes has to revise until dawn for an exam.

I asked him if he wanted a bite to eat. He couldn't, he said. He needs to make the weight for Friday's defence of his titles against Courtney Fry at York Hall in East London, which is live on Sky Sports.

If he wins that, he has a hectic few months ahead. He's been promised a shot at the European title on December 5, he's got three finals exams in January, another fight pencilled in for February and then the last of his exams in May.

"By the time I get my cap and gown in summer," he said, "I should be ready to fight for a world title."

I told him I'd read a Q&A with him recently. Favourite food: steak. Favourite drink: orange juice. Favourite fighter: Joe Calzaghe. Favourite mathematician: Pythagoras.

"That last bit was tongue-incheek," he said. "But actually I do love algebra."

Forget sweet science. Boxing may be about to fall under the spell of one very smart mathematician.

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International rescue

NBA commissioner David Stern is an urbane and pragmatic man who has turned his league into one of the best in the world.

Men like him have not got where they are today without being able to unearth a good euphemism when they need one.

So when we got into a discussion about whether foreign owners may colonise the NBA in the same way they have set up camp in the Premier League, the commissioner was ready.

"We don't call them foreign," he said. "We call them international."

CAPTION(S):

BRAIN POWER Nathan Cleverly yesterday