By William Mackay: Ireland’s Paul McCloskey (22-1, 12 KO’s) badly wants to prove that he’s indeed a world class fighter, but the problem is he failed miserably recently when he was given a shot at showing his stuff against WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan last April. McCloskey had a failure to launch in that fight and spent pretty much the entire fight just trying not to get hit.

It was awful to look at, because McCloskey wasn’t even trying to win and was just looking like a guy trying to survive. On September 10th, McCloskey will get one more shot, this time against Khan’s conqueror Breidis Prescott (24-2, 19 KO’s), who has gotten a lot better recently after losing a couple of fights. Prescott is nothing like what he used to be, and is more of a classic boxer/puncher now instead of just trying to take everyone’s head off with every shot.

McCloskey, and a lot of his fans, think of the Prescott that lost to Kevin Mitchell and Miguel Vazquez as being the same guy that he’ll be facing on September 10th. If McCloskey doesn’t do his homework and find out that version of Prescott is long dead, he’s going to find himself in a deep hole in this fight that he can’t get out of. Prescott isn’t a slugger anymore and is so much better than he used to be.

McCloskey will come out thinking he can out-box Prescott and will find himself getting hit with powerful jabs all night long and softened up for the kill. Prescott arguably has the best jab in the light welterweight division right now. For that matter, I think his jab is better than anyone I’ve seen in the welterweight division as well. His jab is a power shot all to itself, and he really doesn’t even need to throw his hooks and right hands anymore to dominate someone.

Prescott still does, but his jab is so lethal that McCloskey will never get past it in this fight unless he goes all out for a kamikaze attack and just charges Prescott. That won’t work either, because Prescott will light him up with hooks and rights and likely catch him on the way in.

“I want to fight the best fighters out there,” McCloskey said in an article by Dan Rafael at ESPN. “I’m not looking to chase Khan for the rest of my career. I want to be a world champion. I’ll fight anyone to reach that goal, and I know I belong at the world level.”