The thing with Cleverly is that he can't take the Amir Khan route. He just doesn't sell tickets and Box Nation doesn't pay nearly as much as Sky does. Cleverly had a fight against some east european guy at the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff lined up a year or so ago but the tickets weren't selling so they cancelled it and he ended up fighting on some undercard in America. Even the Kovalev fight there were huge numbers of unsold seats. People just weren't going to buy tickets to see him until he'd proved himself so him and Warren rolled the dice against Kovalev. Basically they didn't have any other choices. And in his first proper test he got blown away.
It's going to be a really tough road back for him if he even does continue. Him and Enzo Mac would be an absolute war if it happened but Cleverly has a maths degree and may decide getting battered for small purses isn't something he wants to do.