By William Mackay: For 37-year-old DeMarcus Corley’s sake I hope he brings his own judges to his fight against light welterweight contender Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s) in the form of his fists on May 5th at the Kings’ Hall, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

I think it’s probably not a good idea for Corley (38-19-1, 22 KO’s) to let this fight go to decision, because after what we saw last time with McCloskey getting a gift 12 round decision over Breidis Prescott last September in Belfast, it might be next to impossible for Corley to get a win by a decision that is.

I know the southpaw Corley has more than enough power to get a stoppage, but it’s not going to be easy for him to KO McCloskey with his purely survival oriented fighting style. In his last two fights, McCloskey has given away virtually all of the first half of his fights against Amir Khan and Prescott. I know the judges gave McCloskey the win over Prescott, but I had McCloskey only two rounds in the entire fight, so I dismiss entirely the scores that were given to the hometown McCloskey.

Corley, #14 WBC, has lost eight out of his last ten fights in the past three years, However, you could see he still has a lot of talent in his fights against Lucas Matthysse, Marcos Maidana, Thomas Dulmore and Ruslan Provodnikov. I had Corley beating Maidana and Provodnikov, but I wasn’t surprised to see Corley not get the decision because once you have as many losses as him, it just seems natural for the judges to give close decisions to the other fighter. But what has made things harder for Corley is that he’s been the traveling fighter in most of his fights, taking on the home fighter. That put Corley in a situation where he really needed to whip his opponent in order to get the win.

In his last fight, Corley pulled off a huge huge in defeating a very good fighter in Gabriel Bracero (18-1, 3 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The southpaw Corley’s power and pressure was too much for Bracero to deal with and he eventually lost the fight by a close decision.

McCloskey will be looking to make Corley miss with his shots and trying to pick him off with shots every now and then. I doubt McCloskey will fight with any kind of aggression until the later part of the fight where he’ll literally be forced to try and take the fight to Corley in order to impress the judges enough for him to get the win. I don’t think it matters in the least what Corley does in the fight. I can’t see Corley getting the decision against McCloskey in Belfast. You have to look at McCloskey’s fight against Prescott to know what I’m talking about because Prescott really deserved to get that win in the McCloskey fight but instead he got a loss on his record and NO rematch. McCloskey took his gift decision and moved on rather than facing Prescott again.