By William Mackay: The light hitting defensively oriented Paul McCloskey (22-1, 12 KO’s) will be looking to make his opponent Breidis Prescott (24-2, 19 KO’s) miss with his big shots on Saturday night and then make him pay for his misses with counter shots.

Whether McCloskey can actually do the things he’s talking about is the real question here, because he did a lousy job in his last fight against Amir Khan in landing anything of substance in that fight.

“I know the way he wants the fight to be but I can assure you that I’ll be making him miss and I’ll punish him…Prescott was a massive puncher at lightweight but not a massive puncher at light welterweight.”

I think somebody needs to sit McCloskey down with some of Prescott’s recent fights, all at light welterweight. He’s looking very, very powerful to me. When he lands his shots, they’re making a lot of noise and his opponents were all in the reverse survival mode in his last several fights at the new weight.

I think McCloskey is whistling past the graveyard with his comments about Prescott’s power not being massive at this weight. If anything, Prescott seems to be even more powerful than he was before because he doesn’t have to drain himself like he did before to cut weight to make the 135 lightweight limit. At 140, Prescott looks healthy and powerful.

McCloskey is going to have to focus on making Prescott miss for the entire 12 rounds, because if he even hints at opening up with his own offense, Prescott is going to be all over him and make him pay for that mistake. McCloskey will probably do what he did in the Khan loss – just run around and try not to get hit without throwing any punches himself. Prescott already knows that’s what McCloskey is going to be doing, so he realizes he’s going to be the only one throwing shots in this fight. McCloskey will just stink out the joint and look to survive to another day.