By Scott Gilfoid: Eddie Hearn, the promoter for Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s), wants the WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (30-2, 27 KO’s) to have to come to Belfast, Ireland to fight McCloskey in his home city for his next fight rather than in a neutral country or in Maidana’s home country of Argentina.

I think Maidana would have to have rocks in his head to do it, because we just saw McCloskey win what many brilliant boxing minds think what a hometown decision with his very, very controversial 12 round unanimous decision win over the talented Breidis Prescott (24-3, 19 KO’s) last Saturday in McCloskey’s Belfast, Ireland.

The three European judges scored it as such against the Colombian visitor: 114-113, 115-113 and 114-113.

Hearn said this to the Belfast Telegraph: “He [McCloskey] deserves another world title shot and that will his next fight. We will do whatever it takes to make that happen and there’s no reason we can’t get Marcos Maidana to Belfast for that fight.”

McCloskey already fought WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan last April and stunk out the joint by running and not throwing any punches. It pretty much the same kind of performance we saw last night except that the fight ended a lot quicker when Khan crashed heads with McCloskey in the 6th and opened up a tiny cut above McCloskey’s left eye. The ringside doctor made a quick hook by having the fight stopped rather than letting McCloskey’s corner attempt to stop the blood in between rounds.

Maidana needs to stand firm and insist that the fight not take place in Ireland unless he’s convinced he can score a knockout over McCloskey, and I’m not sure that he can with all the movement that the guy typically does. Maidana might end up chasing McCloskey all night long, out-landing him by a huge margin in power shots, and landing the much harder punches and still end up losing. That’s all Maidana needs is to be on the receiving end of another controversial decision.