By Scott Gilfoid: Next Saturday night Paul McCloskey (22-1, 12 KO’s) will be facing his moment of truth in front of his loyal Irish fans at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland in a fight against what could be the hardest puncher and most destructive fighter in the light welterweight division in Breidis Prescott (24-2, 19 KO’s). McCloskey doesn’t resemble a top fighter in appearance with his slumped shoulders, the smooth and weak-looking muscles, and the complete absence of power and speed. He is good defensively, but that’s all I can really see. I still don’t know what Amir Khan saw in him to choose him as an opponent for his fight last April.

McCloskey is in for a real beating in this fight, I hate to say it. The problem here is that McCloskey is just too weak, too slow of hand, and just too fragile to beat a slugger like Prescott. Even Prescott’s glancing shots will be enough to send McCloskey flying around the ring. And the shots that land will have McCloskey’s head ricocheting this way and that way.

It’s too bad the fight couldn’t be in a different locale because it would probably be better for McCloskey not to get beaten in front of his fans in such a devastating manner. I think it would have been better if the fight could have taken place somewhere like the U.S. and without TV coverage piped back to Ireland. That way boxing fans could only hear about the loss, but not actually see McCloskey getting bounced off the canvas over and over like a basketball by Prescott.

But seriously now, McCloskey is just too weak to do anything in this fight. I got a laugh the other day when I saw a McCLoskey promo video someone put together of his finest movements, and it was just god awful to watch. It was like someone was showing it in slow motion because of how slow McCloskey looked.

At one point, someone must have read my mind because it looked like they sped up the video to give the appearance that McCloskey has speed. Besides the lack of hand speed by McCloskey, his power was laughable. He looked looked really weak in the footage. God, what is McCLoskey going to do against Prescott without speed, without power and without a great chin to take his huge shots? All I can think of is McCloskey running around the ring all night long just looking to survive to live another day.

I think he may fight like he did against Amir Khan, where he puts off attacking Prescott until the midpoint of the fight after losing the first five rounds. But I don’t think McCloskey will try and fight Prescott even then. I think he’ll put it off like it’s a homework assignment he doesn’t want to tackle for fear of the pain of doing the work until it’s far too late. It really doesn’t matter though. If McCloskey attacks early, he gets knocked out. If he runs until the late rounds to survive and then attacks, he gets knocked out.

Running no longer works against Prescott. McCloskey will find out that now that Prescott uses his power jab all the time, he can dominate the runners like Kevin Mitchell and McCLoskey no matter how much running they do. It only makes it worse for them because they take punishment for a longer period of time compared to if they just went at Prescott immediately and got it over with and were knocked out.