By William Mackay: Light welterweight contender Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s) will be facing 37-year-old journeyman DeMarcus Corley (38-19-1, 22 KO’s) on May 5th instead of Julio Diaz, because Diaz reportedly is having problems with the weight and would likely not be able to make 140 for this fight. Corley and McCloskey will be fighting at the King’s Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

With Diaz out of the fight there won’t be much of a drop off if any because Corley is about as good as Diaz right now. It didn’t use to be that way, but Diaz has been on downward slide in his career for a while now. You can say the same thing about Corley, who has lost eight out of his last ten fights since November 2009.

Corley is still a good high level journeyman, and he recently defeated prospect Gabriel Bracero by a 10 round unanimous decision last January in a big upset. Most of Corley’s defeats have come against quality fighters in the past three years, guys like Marcos Maidana, Lucas Matthysse, Thomas Dulorme and Ruslan Provodnikov.

McCloskey, #8 WBA, defeated Breidis Prescott by a 12 round unanimous decision in his last fight last September. The win was controversial, and it looked like McCloskey the fight. He might as well have lost, because he seemed to have lost a lot of cache with boxing fans because of how poor the decision was and how awful McCloskey looked in the fight. He was knocked down in round one, and took punishment until the second half of the fight at which point he started coming back by putting pressure on the increasingly tired Prescott.

However, it really wasn’t effective pressure because he was missing most of his shots while Prescott was drilling him in the head with jabs round after round. In the final round, Precott had McCloskey staggering in the final seconds of the fight after connecting with some big shots. McCloskey was still staggering around the ring afterwards. But some reason the judges gave it to him in what a lot of boxing fans see as a home town decision.

Corley can win this fight if he puts a lot of pressure on the light hitting McCloskey for 12 rounds. It’s got to be constant pressure because McCloskey will likely try and make a move in the second half of the fight to try and pull out the decision. The southpaw Corley could have an easy target during that part of the fight if he has anything left in the tank.