By William Mackay: Eddie Hearn, the promoter for Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s), says he’d like to get WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (30-2, 27 KO’s) to travel to McCloskey’s home country of Ireland for their fight before the end of the year.

Hearn said this to the Belfast Telegraph: “We will do whatever it takes to make that happen and there’s no reason why we can’t get Marcos Maidana to Belfast for that fight” [against McCloskey].

I think it might be nearly impossible at this point for Hearn to lure Maidana to Belfast, not after McCloskey’s controversial 12 round unanimous decision win over Breidis Prescott last Saturday night. While British and Irish boxing fans are pretty much unanimous that the right man won the fight, the rest of the world are overwhelmingly seeing it as a hometown decision for McCloskey.

That’s a problem, and it’s all well and good that McCloskey’s fans think he should have won by an overwhelming margin, fans from outside of the UK thing it was an outright robbery. Maidana’s promoters from Golden Boy likely won’t be eager to see their fighter travel to Northern Ireland to take a huge risk where he might be forced to really whip McCloskey badly – if not knock him out cold – to ensure that he gets a win.

If I was Maidana’s promoter, now way would I want to have my fighter come to McCloskey’s neck of the woods and risk getting beat by a controversial decision either. As such, I think Hearn and McCloskey need to sit down and think of meeting Maidana in neutral territory, so that the fight result that comes of this bout isn’t tainted by controversy like the Prescott-McCloskey fight is.

I would never let Maidana fight McCloskey in Northern Ireland or England for that matter after watching last Saturday’s fight. I think it’s too risky. I wouldn’t want Maidana to have to knock McCloskey just to get a win. I saw McCloskey losing the first seven rounds against Prescott, which should have put McCloskey in situation where he needed a knockout to win.

I gave Prescott most of the 2nd round half rounds because McCloskey was missing constantly and eating jabs. In the 12th round, McCloskey was staggered badly to the point where he still was staggering after the fight ended. I couldn’t give McCloskey that round based on the staggering. It was a bad decision. Maidana doesn’t need this risk.