By Richard Doyle: Paul McCloskey (22-1, 12 KO’s) is a great fighter one in which I do admire with a fighting style much like that of the once great Prince Naseem and over the last few years I’ve been able to watch most of his big fights on sky sports and although I have much respect for him I never saw him winning the fight with WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (25-1, 17 KO’s) even before a bell was rung.

McCloskey is a counter puncher who sits back in his south paw stance with his hands down and pounces on mistakes usually wearing fighters down to a unanimous decision victory or a late stoppage and often looks good doing it but that was against ok fighters, against the likes of Khan that style would never work unless your name is Floyd Mayweather and still I would say Khan could give Floyd some problems.

Khan uses speed and sometimes long combinations in fights and is usually in and out before you can react using a hit and run style, but with McCloskey not exchanging when Khan came forward Khan kept throwing punches and scoring points (not exactly cleanly but effectively) this forced McCloskey on to the back foot throughout the six rounds we saw , now understand I’m not saying there’s a big difference in class between the two especially on the night in question but I never thought ,saw or even believed had the fight gone on that Khan would have been in trouble. He threw twice as many punches, landed twice as many punches and was up 6 rounds to nil on all three score cards (and this was with a very sloppy, poor performance from the World champion ), as for him tiring I would like to know when exactly ,He seemed to win the 5th and 6th rounds fairly handy and it wasn’t as if he was being tested at any time, and as for being knocked out people are certainly clutching at strews we all know McCloskey is not a big hitter and Khan didn’t seem fazed in round four by McCloskey’s classy left hook or any punches that got through in any of the six rounds.

I do feel sorry for Paul in one way though and that is we all have a dream and path to get there and because of an idiot of a referee with no back bone his chance (although slim) was cut short. I do feel that McCloskey is world class and will eventually become a world champion ,I already hear rumours going round about a possible Zab Judah fight and believe me I will have money on McCloskey if that fight comes round.

As for Khan I don’t feel he has to justify himself by giving a rematch, he did what he had to do to win the fight and he did (I’m sorry Paul but you have to throw punches to win fights) , and he now has a big money fight with Timothy Bradley on the horizon so good luck to him.