By William Mackay: If unbeaten Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) can survive what will likely be an early all out blitz by WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 12 KO’s), Barry McGuigan believes that the 31-year-old McCloskey can win this fight. McGuigan notes that the 24-year-old Khan has had problems with southpaws, and McCloskey isn’t easy to hit because of his elusive style of fighting.

McGuigan had this to say at independent.ie: “Khan is a fast starter and will try to blow him [McCloskey] away. If McCloskey avoids too much collateral damage in the early rounds and takes it down into the later rounds then he will be right in there with a chance.”

McGuigan is correct. Khan is a very fast starter and gets most of his knockouts early in his fights. But as we saw in his recent fight with Marcos Maidana, Khan is much less effective when he gets into the later rounds. He loses his power, his arms and legs get rubbery and he tends to do a lot of holding. If McCloskey can survive long enough to get to the last four rounds, he might be in a good position to test Khan’s chin by attacking him all out the way that Maidana was able to do. However, the referee will have to be on his job to prevent Khan from holding nonstop and shoving McCloskey the way that Khan was doing with Maidana.

A good referee will penalize those behaviors and force Khan to either fight or run. There is no excuse for a fighter to be permitted to hold for the last three rounds of the fight without being penalized. And shoving your opponent when they get in close is also something the referee shouldn’t allow. If you watch Khan’s fight with Maidana, he often shoved Maidana when he was in close. This is a tactic that some fighters use when they don’t have an inside game. They simply shove their opponent hard to get them to the outside where they can control the fight. That’s not permitted in boxing. If the referee isn’t on his job, McCloskey and his trainer need to complain about this to stop Khan from doing this. You can’t have a fighter using illegal tactics to get an edge, can you?