By William Mackay: Unbeaten Irish light welterweight contender Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) thinks that WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) may have been damaged from all the punishment he suffered in his last fight against knockout artist Marcos Maidana (30-2, 27 KO’s) last year in December.

Khan won the fight by a 12 round decision but at a heavy price. He was badly beaten by Maidana after Khan could no longer run from the hard hitting Argentinean slugger from the 10th until the 12th round.

If there is any positive to see from this fight it’s that Khan was able to run for the first nine rounds to save himself from being battered in those rounds as well.

In an article at the dailymail.co.uk, McCloskey said “You have to bear in mind that he [Khan] took a lot of punishment in the Maidana fight, more than he would have expected to take. There was a lot of damage done in that fight, but Maidana wasn’t cute enough to take him out. I am.”

Maidana may have taken Khan out but Khan was able to do a lot of holding in the last three rounds, and the times that the referee chose to separate Khan and Maidana often came when Khan was getting pummeled with big shot against the ropes. Had Khan been penalized to force him to stop holding or if the referee had just let Maidana continue to slug away while being held by Khan, I could have seen Maidana knocking Khan out.

It was a very strange fight. I think Khan might have lost that fight had there been a referee that was a little more strict about holding. I also have to wonder whether Khan will ever be the same after the Maidana beating. He took a lot of head shots and looked terrible by the end of the fight. We may just see Khan keel over with one good left hand shot from McCloskey in this fight on Saturday. I wouldn’t be the least surprised.