By Sean McDaniel: Having failed to capture Amir Khan’s WBA light welterweight title last Saturday night at the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester, England, the 31-year-old Paul McCloskey (22-1, 12 KO’s) and his promoter Eddie Hearn are now targeting International Boxing Federation (IBF) light welterweight champion Zab Judah (41-6, 28 KO’s) another title shot. Judah, 33, has a voluntary title defense coming up and if he doesn’t use it by defending his title against Juan Manuel Marquez, McCloskey may be a mouth watering option for Judah.
McCloskey doesn’t bring the same kind of danger that some of the top contenders in the light welterweight division bring and Judah might go for that option in order to preserve his time at the top for a little while longer.
In an article at the belfasttelegraph.co.uk, Hearn said “Paul’s stature in world boxing has grown dramatically after Saturday night. I think the Judah fight is a possibility to Paul if Khan will not step up to the plate but we are hoping the WBA take some action.”
McCloskey was beaten by a 6th round technical decision in the Khan fight last weekend. The bout was halted because of a small cut over McCloskey’s left eye. It appeared that the ringside doctor was a bit quick in stopping the fight rather than letting it go on longer to see if McCloskey’s corner could stop the cut in between rounds. McCloskey was trailing badly at the time of the stoppage and hadn’t won a round. However, Khan looked to be tiring and was missing with a lot of his shots.
Hearn and McCloskey are hoping to get a rematch with Khan, but that’s not going to happen. Khan is moving on and plans on fighting a bigger fighter against WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley on July 23. Khan doesn’t want to revisit the McCloskey fight and fight him one more time.
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