By William Mackay: Out of all the opponents that WBA Super World champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) could have picked out for his next fight on April 16th at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, Khan had to select Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KOs), a fighter that Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach isn’t impressed with. Roach has noticed, like myself, that McCloskey lacks hand speed. Without hand speed or huge power, McCloskey is nothing more than a sitting duck for Khan to pad his record with.

In an article at the examiner.com, Roach said this about Khan’s next opponent: “McCloskey is a southpaw who is right-handed and has a real good right hook. He rolls his shoulder a little bit like [Floyd] Mayweather, to try to be like Mayweather, but he’s not near as fast. I’m not overly impressed with McCloskey. I think Amir will knock him out.”

You think? Of course he will, but that’s not saying much. The WBA made a huge mistake in my view to rank McCloskey at number #5 in the division, because the guy has been facing 2nd tier and 3rd tier opponents his entire career and has yet to cut his teeth on an upper level guy. I’m not one for fighters being matched softly when they’re holding a title belt like Khan, because frankly that’s bad for boxing to see fighters like Khan being matched against weak opponents without experience at the upper level.

McCloskey, not exactly young at 31, is going to be going from European level guys like Daniel Rasilla, Giuseppe Lauri and Barry Morrison to Khan. Sorry, but I don’t Rasilla, Lauri and Morrison as 1st tier fighters.

McCloskey should have at least proven that he can beat a top 15 guy by beating someone like Danny Garcia, Breidis Prescott or Ruslan Provodnikov before getting a title shot against Khan. By the way, I see all three of those fighters knocking McCloskey out cold if given a chance.