By William Mackay: Having had no luck in trying to find a contender or champion that was willing to travel to Belfast to fight #8 WBA ranked light welterweight contender Paul McCloskey, Eddie Hearn, McCloskey’s promoter at Matchroom Sport, is reportedly looking to have him fight 2nd tier fighter Curtis Woodhouse (16-3, 11 KO’s) in April in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Hearn will need permission from Woodhouse’s promoter for that to happen, however, and I can see that as a possible problem because the last guy that went to Belfast to fight McCloskey – Breidis Prescott – ended up losing a very controversial 12 round unanimous decision over there last September.

There’s not too many people outside of Northern Ireland that saw McCloskey winning that fight.Indeed, I had Prescott winning by a lopsided decision and no way did I see McCloskey as having done even close to enough to win the fight. Woodhouse is a decent fighter, but he’s never beaten a top tier guy.

I thought he fought well enough to deserve a decision in his fight against Frankie Gavin last July in his 12 round split decision loss. Other than that, Woodhouse also lost to Peter McDonagh by an 8 round points decision in October 2010. In his last fight, Woodhouse stopped Gary McArthur by a 4th round retirement last November.

I think Woodhouse has some respectable power, and he’d definitely put McCloskey through a real tough fight, but I don’t think he’d win. It might be worth a shot just to get the chance to get ranked in the top 15 if Woodhouse could somehow beat McCloskey. However, I think he’d never get the decision over there, not in a million years.

If you saw the Prescott-McCloskey fight and noted how badly McCloskey was dominated and yet still won the fight, I don’t give Woodhouse a chance in a million at winning a decision. The only way he’d beat McCloskey is to knock him out in my mind, and that’s not going to be easy with McCloskey’s defensive style of fighting.

The most I can see Woodhouse doing is beating McCloskey up badly, marking his face up and then ending up losing by a controversial decision. If I was Woodhouse’s promoter I would put the fight together if I thought Woodhouse could knock McCloskey out, but short of that, I wouldn’t do it because I don’t think they would give him the decision over there in Belfast.