By William Mackay: Any time you’ve got an obscure fighter that hasn’t faced world level opposition like Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s), it’s never a good sign when you see his opponent building him up to try and make him look better than he actually might actually be. WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) has selected McCloskey out of a bunch of arguably much more dangerous fighters to take on for his next fight in the UK on April 16th.

This has the look of a one-sided mismatch, and it doesn’t matter than Khan is heaping praises on McCloskey. One look at any of his fights and it’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t have world class speed, power or defensive ability. He appears to be someone that is a decent Euro level fighter, a fighter that will be way out of his class in his first fight at the world level against the champion Khan. In the best of worlds, it would have been nice if McCloskey had a chance to prove that he belongs ranked at number #5 by the WBA by at least beating one top contender, even a bottom 15 guy.

Khan had this to say about McCloskey in a Sky Sports News interview: “I’ve never met him. He’s supposed to be a great fighter. He’s undefeated, a European champion. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be a big fight for me. I’m coming home.”

Khan left out, ‘weak punching and slow’ in his description of McCloskey. It’s too bad Khan didn’t feel good enough to try and give Breidis Prescott a rematch so that Khan could try and avenge his 1st round knockout loss to him, but I guess he had one ingredient that had him off limits – power. McCloskey is a lot safer pick for Khan.