By William Mackay: Ireland’s Paul McCloskey (22-1, 12 KO’s) suddenly has huge dreams about who he wants to fight in his next bout after getting beat and blowing his chance in a title shot against WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan on April 16th. McCloskey did pretty much zero in the fight other than throwing an occasional slow punch. The mismatch was finally stopped in the 6th after McCloskey suffered a cut over his left eye from a head butt.

The referee probably did McCloseky a favor by stopping it. McCloskey immediately called for a rematch with Khan, but, of course, Khan isn’t in the least interested in doing the fight again. With Khan not interested in fighting again, McCloskey is now redirecting his sights towards Devon Alexander, Marcos Maidana, Timothy Bradley and Zab Judah for who he wants to fight next.

McCloskey said this on his twitter page: “I want to tell all my fans everywhere I want to make a fight with @ChinoMaidana, @SuperJudah, Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander this year.”

I think McCloskey’s chances of fighting any of them are about zero. He doesn’t have a name in the United States, and that’s probably. And McCloskey’s performance against Khan didn’t endear him to U.S. audiences. McCloskey just looked like a short, weak slow guy against Khan. He looked like one of Khan’s handpicked opponents from after his knockout loss to Bredis Prescott rather than a fighter that is ranked in the light welterweight division. I can’t see Maidana, Bradley, Alexander, Judah or Bradley wasting time fighting McCoskey. Even if they had an open schedule, I can’t see them wasting a fight against him. McCloskey needs to go back to the European scene and continue his career facing Euro and/or domestic level fodder.