By William Mackay: WBA Super World light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) sustained an awful beating in his last fight against challenger Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) last December. Had Maidana’s punch accuracy been a little bit better in this fight, he would have had an excellent chance of knocking Khan out early in the fight when Khan was running around the ring in wide circles.

Maidana proved to be only so-so at hitting a moving target. Khan wasn’t doing much himself other than throwing a lot of flurries that hit mostly air. However, the judges love that kind of stuff, so it doesn’t matter whether Khan’s shots were landing or not. He was winning rounds just by throwing a mess of air punches. But Maidana’s problem was that he was loading up and throwing one big punch at a time and missing often.

McCloskey can punch hard enough to knock Khan out if he can improve on the poor punch accuracy that Maidana had. It likely won’t be nearly as difficult for McCloskey to land with a high connect percentage because Khan isn’t going to be respecting him in the same way he was with Maidana. McCloskey doesn’t hit as hard, and isn’t know as a big knockout puncher. This is why Khan will be there to be hit, because he’s going to be looking to throw more of his flurries to try and impress the fans and the judges.

Those flurries will mean that Khan will be standing in front of McCloskey for him to wind up with one of his straight left hands or right hooks to nail Khan. All McCloskey has to do is make sure his punches land and Khan’s weak chin will do the rest. If you land on Khan’s fragile jaw, it doesn’t matter if you’re a huge puncher or not. Khan’s chin will react the same way by causing him to stagger around the ring. Khan might not be able to take even moderately hard punchers after all the shots he absorbed from Maidana. McCloskey gets to be the first fighter to take on Khan after the Maidana fight. We could see Khan flopping around on the canvas if McCloskey can land some shots.