By Scott Gilfoid: The powerful southpaw DeMarcus Corley (38-19-1, 22 KO’s) will be introducing himself to Paul McCloskey (23-1, 12 KO’s) tonight when the two southpaws square off in a 12 round bout at the Kings Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Corley, 37, will be showing McCloskey what the power game is all about when he punishes the Irish contender badly in front of his own fans in Belfast. Corley knows he’s got to KO McCloskey brutally to make sure he walks out of the arena with the win, because we saw last time that McCloskey fought that you can’t just dominate him and think you’re going to get the win, as Breidis Prescott found out the hard way last September in Belfast.

Corley no doubt doesn’t want a taste of being jobbed by the referees. He’s got to KO McCloskey KO him good so that he can’t get up 20 seconds and resume fighting. After seeing the Prescott-McCloskey fight, I don’t don’t count on Corley being able to leave a win. I think he’s going to have to put a serious hurting on McCloskey to the point where he’ll be put down in one of those long knockout snoozes.

Corley is coming off of one of his best wins in quite some time in beating previously unbeaten Gabriel Bracero by a 10 round unanimous decision last January. Before that, Corley had lost eight out of his last nine fights, but a couple of those fights – against Marcos Maidana and Ruslan Provodnikov – should have wins for Corley because he fought well enough to deserve decisions in both of those fights. Corley’s biggest problem is his chin, and his ability to take hard body shots. He struggles against punchers, there’s no question about that. But he does well against feather-fisted fighters like McCloskey. If a guy has no power, Corley is going to give him a ton of trouble because he’s got excellent power in both hands.

McCloskey should be coming into tonight’s fight against Corley with two consecutive losses, because McCloskey was beaten by Amir Khan by a 6th round technical decision last year in April in an awful performance by McCloskey, and then he got his controversial 12 round unanimous decision against Presott in his last fight in September last year. McCloskey’s offensive skills are terrible. He’s good on defense, but that’s all he does. He doesn’t have any balance in his game and mostly just moves along the ring trying to make the other miss all night long. I don’t see how he wins any fights that way.