By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) has decided to take the safe route by taking on the weak-punching and slow-handed EBU light welterweight champion Paul McCloskey (22-0, 9 KO’s) in his next fight on April 16th at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, England.

The choice came down to either the lighting hitting southpaw McCloskey or the 37-year-old past his prime Junior Witter, and Khan opted to take McCloskey. This is a fight that will no doubt please Khan’s British boxing fans, who are well familiar with McCloskey and like him a lot.

For Americans, this won’t do much for them because no one will have heard of McCloskey. The ones that have seen McCloskey fight, like myself, likely won’t be pleased because he’s not been fighting world class opponents, he has no power, no hand speed and has struggled against the European level opponents he’s faced.

McCloskey is, however, a safe choice for the weak-chinned Khan to take because McCloskey doesn’t have the power to take Khan out like harder hitting world class light welterweights like Lucas Matthysse, Marcos Maidana and Breidis Prescott.

Khan had this to say about the selection of McCloskey in an article at sport.stv: “I am delighted that this fight has finally been put together following some tough negotiations. This is a matchup the British public want to see and will be a fantastic fight between two of the best light-welterweights in the country.”

McCloskey is from Ireland, so there may be some kind of Irish vs. English rivalry going for this fight. Other than that, it’s pretty much a hopeless mismatch. McCloskey doesn’t have the hand speed or power to be competitive with Khan, so you can expect him to go down fairly early unless Khan takes it easy on him.

Personally, I hate the choice and see it as a choice that will only please Khan’s British fans. Hopefully, HBO decides not to show this mismatch because there’s better fights that can be shown than this.