By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) isn’t over-looking his next opponent Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) and plans on treating him like he another Marcos Maidana, Khan said in an interview at the BBC News. Khan, 24, faces McCloskey on April 16th at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester.

McCloskey, however, has none of the same power as Maidana, which is why it seems all the more amusing that Khan is saying he’s going to treat McCloskey like Maidana. This is basically a hand-picked opponent for Khan. He selected the weak-punching, slow-handed McCloskey over harder punchers like Breidis Prescott and Lamont Peterson.

Now Khan is saying he wants to use McCloskey to try and look good against. The chances are high that Khan will look good against McCloskey, but that’s normally the case when you selected someone that is way out of his class and has never fought a 1st tier fighter before. When you’re a champion like Khan, you’d at least like to see him fighting someone with experience beyond the EBU level, don’t you? Sadly, McCloskey has been fighting Euro level opponents until now.

The #5 ranking by the WBA seems to be another case of the WBA giving a fighter without experience at the upper level a high ranking. They did this with Dimitriy Salita and look what Khan did to him. Salita had never fought a 1st tier fighter before and was given a number #1 ranking by the WBA. Khan promptly destroyed Salita in a 1st round blowout. How the WBA could make Salita #1 above guys like Victor Ortiz is beyond me. I don’t understand that kind of ranking.

In the BBC interview, Khan said “I want to prove to everyone how good Amir Khan is. Not only in England, but all over the world. So I want to beat McCloskey in better fashion than Bradley beat Devon Alexander.”

The one problem getting in the way of Khan getting more credit than Bradley did for his win over Alexander is that McCloskey isn’t in the same class as Alexander. I mean, come on, Khan. Do you really think that boxing fans see the little known McCloskey as being in the same league as Alexander? All it takes is one glance of one of McCloskey’s fights on youtube for you to see how painfully slow, hittable and weak-punching McCloskey is. Does Khan think McCoskey’s mediocre skills are going to be missed by boxing fans worldwide who see the Khan-McCloskey fight?