McCloskey hopes to be back in the ring in February or March

By Boxing News - 12/27/2011 - Comments

Image: McCloskey hopes to be back in the ring in February or MarchBy Sean McDaniel: Since successfully beating Breidis Prescott by a 12 round unanimous decision last September in a WBA light welterweight title eliminator bout in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s) has kind of been the forgotten man in the division. The title fight that he had hoped would come with the Prescott victory has failed to materialize and it’s unclear when McCloskey will eventually get the title shot that he worked so hard to get.

In McCloskey’s twitter page, he said “I’ll be training hard through Christmas; aim is to be out late Feb early March again. Negotiations are ongoing at the minute!”

McCloskey doesn’t say who exactly he’ll be fighting next, but it’s obviously not going to be WBA World light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson, because he’s looking to get a big money fight against a big name in the sport like Manny Pacquiao. It also isn’t going to be WBA regular light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana, because he’s already scheduled to fight a non-title bout against Devon Alexander on February 25th, so that doesn’t fit in with McCloskey’s time frame.

Hopefully McCloskey can get a good stay busy fight against somebody halfway decent. He’s got to be careful not to fight someone too good because he took a lot of punishment against Prescott and almost lost the fight. A lot of boxing fans thought McCloskey should have lost, but he seems to have been rewarded a lot of rounds based on the fact that he was always coming forward in the second half of the fight and trying to get to Prescott.

McCloskey would like a rematch with Amir Khan that’s not happening either. Khan wants no part of facing McCloskey again after he made Khan look bad in a loss earlier this year. Khan missed with his shots all night long and looked to be tiring when he McCloskey was cut from a head-butt in the 6th.



Comments are closed.