By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) has resumed talks with number #5 ranked WBA contender Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) for a bout that will be taking place on April 16th at the M.E.N. Arena. McCloskey and his promoter Barry Hearn turned down Khan’s initial offer. However, Khan and his management has made a second offer after initially making it a take it or leave it offer to McCloskey.
In an article at the Mirror.co.uk, Khan said “The offer we made to Paul McCloskey is the biggest offer he’s ever going to get. Why is it when someone wants to fight Amir Khan, they ask for a stupid number? Marcos Maidana asked for a stupid number first time. Then he came to his senses and said ‘fine, I’ll take the second offer’. It’s the same with Paul McCloskey and I hope he takes our second offer and it is going to be higher. He should think ‘this is an opportunity for a world title fight and if I beat him, it will make me a big, big name.’”
Khan fails to see that boxers know that he makes a ton of money for each of his fights, and they don’t want to be paid chicken feed for being his opponent. Khan needs to get used to this because if he keeps winning, it’s only get worse not better.
Khan wants McCloskey in the worst way as his next opponent despite McCloskey being only known in the UK. Elsewhere around the world, McCloskey is a complete unknown. The fight will be interesting for UK fans, because they know of McCloskey. However, it won’t draw flies in the U.S. if HBO puts it on the air. It will likely get low ratings.
Khan would do better to face a recognizable fighter like Victor Ortiz or Breidis Prescott. Unfortunately, Khan wants no part of those two hard punchers and for good reason. They punch incredibly hard and one of them – Prescott – knocked Khan out in the 1st round in 2008. Khan doesn’t want to even try and avenge that loss, something that prevents him from being taken seriously by some boxing fans.
Despite that loss to Prescott, Khan has done well to pad his record by beating soft opponents Dimitri Salita, Paulie Malignaggi, an old Marco Antonio Barrera, and Oisen Fagan. Recently, Khan defeated Marcos Maidana by a 12 round decision in the biggest win of Khan’s career. However, that win was tainted because Khan was badly staggered in the 10th and pounded on in the last three rounds, perhaps only saved by the help of referee Joe Cortez, who for some strange reason stepped in repeatedly to pull Maidana off of Khan while Khan was getting battered against the ropes in the last three rounds of the fight.
McCloskey has little power, zero hand speed and a bad habit of fighting with his hands hanging down by his waist. In comparing him to the other top contenders in the light welterweight division, McCloskey likely falls down in the bottom 20 area because of his lack of power and hand speed. McCloskey would be in a world of hurt if he were to face guys like Maidana, Ortiz and Lucas Matthysse. However, with his lack of power, he’s the perfect opponent for the weak-chinned Khan to get a win against. McCloskey’s perfect 22-0 record might help get HBO to agree to the Khan-McCloskey fight, even though on principal they no longer want to show hopeless mismatches for fighters trying to pad their record and avoid losses.
Comments are closed.