By William Mackay: Light welterweight contender Breidis Prescott (24-3, 19 KO’s) is in a crucial fight for him on November 12th against unbeaten IBF light welterweight Latino champion Mike Alvarado (31-0, 22 KO’s) on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Prescott, 28, just finished losing a controversial 12 unanimous decision to home fighter Paul McCloskey in Belfast, Northern Ireland last September in a fight where Prescott appeared to win by a significant margin in the minds of many boxing fans.

Prescott obviously learned a hard lesson that it doesn’t pay off to travel to other fighter’s home towns when taking fights. It’s better to turn down a fight or at least exert enough pressure to get the fight in a neutral venue than to travel to a place where you’re in a situation where you almost need a knockout to win.

It doesn’t matter that Prescott appeared to win in the opinion of a lot of fans, Prescott still has to beat Alvarado on November 12th if he wants to stay relevant in the light welterweight division.

Prescott can’t run out of gas in the second half of the fight if he wants to win. He seemed to tire out in the last four rounds of the fight, although he kept feeding McCloskey hard jabs and was rarely getting hit. It was enough the judges to score the rounds against him despite the fact that Prescott was really the only one landing anything while McCloskey was busy hitting air.