By William Mackay: Light welterweight contender Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s) will be facing former IBF lightweight champion Julio Diaz (38-7, 27 KO’s) on May 5th at the Kings Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. The 32-year-old McCloskey hasn’t been able to land a title shot after beating Breidis Prescott by a controversial 12 round decision last September in a WBA light welterweight title eliminator bout. It was a fight that few boxing fans felt that McCloskey deserved to get the decision.

It’s more of a loss than a win for McCloskey because it didn’t improve his stature among boxing fans and if anything, it may have lowered it a rung. Instead of fighting the 32-year-old Diaz, who is best his best at this point in his career, McCloskey and his promoter Eddie Hearn should have been trying to get a rematch against Prescott but in a neutral venue. I don’t think McCloskey could ever get Prescott to come back to Belfast for a rematch after losing to him. It just seemed so obvious that Prescott did the better work and deserved the decision but found himself on the losing end of a controversial decision in McCloskey’s home country.

McCloskey can’t punch and is mostly a fighter that is focused on trying to make his opponents. That’s pretty much his entire game. He can put pressure on his opponents from time to time, but as we saw against Prescott, he mostly missed while the Irish crowd cheered as if he were landing. He wasn’t. He was getting hit as he came in and as he came back out. It was a one-sided fight. Khan beat McCloskey pretty decisively last April in a fight that was stopped in the 6th round and ruled a technical decision win for Khan due to a cut opening up between McCloskey’s eyes from a clash of heads.