By Scott Gilfoid: I can’t say I was very impressed with EBU light welterweight champion Paul McCloskey’s 11th round TKO against Italian Giuseppe Lauri on Friday night at the Kings Hall, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. McCloskey, 30, showed little hand speed, power or ring movement. He looked tired by the 8th round, and had nothing on his shots.

If Lauri didn’t look so basic, he probably could have easily won this fight. All the dude did was cover up and plod forward all night long, leaning forward and letting McCloskey nail him weak uppercuts again and again. In the 11th, Lauri hit McCloskey with a rabbit punch while in a clinch with him.

Like a good one, Lauri apologized after the two were separated by the referee. Lauri seemed not to be ready for the action when it resumed and wasn’t prepared when the southpaw McCloskey nailed him with a fast right hook that he wasn’t expecting, causing Lauri to hit the deck like a sack of potatoes. He wasn’t able to get up and beat the count and McCloskey was awarded the knockout at 0:45 of the 11th.

All in all, I thought both fighters looked absolutely terrible. I can’t believe that the WBC has McCloskey ranked #7`in the light welterweight division over guys like Mike Alvarado, Juan Diaz, Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse and Jose Miguel Cotto. I think all those fighters are a lot better than McCloskey and I think he would be knocked out by all of them.

All the rounds were almost identical in the McCloskey-Lauri fight, with Lauri plodding forward and throwing almost nothing. McCloskey constantly poured in weak uppercuts, hooks and straight left hands but his punches and arms looked like wet noodles. He just didn’t have any power at all and had this annoying habit of fighting with his hands drooping down in front of him like he was exhausted.

I could see that it something that was supposed to resemble American fighters like Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather Jr., but it looked horrible when McCloskey was doing it because he had no hand speed to fight like this. It didn’t really matter in the early rounds, because Lauri did almost zero punching. But in rounds nine and ten, Lauri began to take the fight to the now exhausted looking McCloskey and punished him on the inside with hooks and uppercuts.

McCloskey, now taking shots to the head and breathing hard, still wouldn’t raise his hands to try and protect his head. It was really pitiful his lack of defense.

I think McCloskey is doing well by fighting at the European level but I think he would totally destroyed if he ever steps it up against the world level light welterweights like Marcos Maidana, Devon Alexander, Victor Ortiz, Timothy Bradley, and Mike Alvarado.