By Chris Williams: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) will be starting training for his next fight on Monday. Khan, 24, will be facing Ireland’s Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) on April 16th at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, England.
This is a fight that will be pay-per-view in England on Sky, and will be shown on HBO in the United States.
Khan had this to say about his training preparation for the McCloskey fight: “I’m going to be leaving for England and going to America for four weeks in Los Angeles, then go to the Philippines to start training alongside Manny, with Freddie [Roach] and everyone. It will be good to train with Manny because he’s a southpaw with a similar style [to the southpaw McCloskey]. Freddie has all the sparring partners ready.”
In looking at some recent video of McCloskey, I’d have say he has nothing in common with Pacquiao in terms of fighting style. McCloskey fights with his hands down by his sides, and is very slow with his hands and looks weak. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of power, even though he does have 12 knockouts on his record. The knockouts obviously are a product of the B and C level opponents that McCloskey has exclusively fought during his career.
He’s a domestic level fighter who the WBA has decided to rank at the number #5 spot without McCloskey having had to prove himself worthy of the ranking by at least beating one top 15 contender during his career. But Khan is may need to get a good pair of glasses because the only thing that McCloskey has in common with Pacquiao is his southpaw stance.
In this case, I think Khan may end up hurting himself if he trains with Pacquiao for the McCloskey fight, because Khan needs to spar with someone a lot slower that will resemble the speed of McCloskey’s shots. And Khan needs to spar with a fighter that keeps his guard down all the time like McCloskey does. That’s not how Pacquiao fights.
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