McCloskey lays down the gauntlet to Khan

PAUL McCLOSKEY challenged British golden boy, Amir Khan, for a shot at his WBA world title after dismissing former British champion, Barry Morrison, inside seven rounds in his second European light middleweight title defence at The Aura in Letterkenny on Saturday night.

The 31-year-old Dungiven man, working safely from behind an accurate and solid southpaw jab, dropped Morrison with a sharp right hook to the temple in the fifth. After taking the count, Morrison came back with all guns blazing but McCloskey slipped his punches and had him on the floor again early in the seventh although London referee, Mark Green, ruled it was from an accidental fall.

Morrison, however, succumbed to McCloskey’s relentless combinations later in the round and Green was forced to stop the contest.

The unbeaten Derry man insisted: “There was never any doubt in my mind that I would win this fight. I was so pleased with the performance. Barry is a hard, hard man but he never touched me. You can train as hard as you like – and I trained very hard – but I’m blessed with reflexes.

“I did not get hit very often and that victory takes me up another step to the next level. When you are European champion you start thinking about a world title. I’m not going to rush into anything, we’ll sit down and think about it.

“Obviously Amir Khan is the one we are going to be thinking about. He is one of the big names out there – he’s English and I’m Irish and that would be a great fight. I’d like to fight Khan but I’ll fight Timothy Bradley or David Alexander (the other world champions). I’m boxing well and I know I can fight them.”

John Breen, his trainer, insisted McCloskey is ready to take on any of the three champions.

“Paul boxed well tonight,” he said. “Barry Morrison is a very experienced boxer – he is a former British champion, and Paul made him look like a novice out there.”

Andy Murray, another of Ireland’s unbeaten hopefuls, was also looking for bigger things after he hammered out a unanimous points victory over John Nonalsco (Dominican Republic) over 10 rounds.

“I won’t get carried away by this,” the unbeaten Cavan man said. “Hopefully I’ll get a shot at a European title before too long. “I’m here to win a major title – I’m not in it for the fun of it.”

There were more huge performances for the Cork-based Cubans. Alexei Acosta kept his unbeaten record intact when he stopped Cristian Faccio (Uruguay) in the fourth round of their scheduled eight rounder. And super middleweight Louis Garcia continued his race up the rankings with a sixth round stoppage over Jorge Rodriguez Olivera.

While all that was happening in Ireland, Ryoi Li Lee, lured Kratingdaenggym Poonsawat to Tokyo where he stripped him of his WBA world super bantamweight title, 53 weeks after he took it from Bernard Dunne.