Plans for an all Irish middleweight Prizefighter underway

He may have played in front of 20,000 supporters in his football days, but Curtis Woodhouse isn’t the type of name to inspire 10,000 fans to the Odyssey arena.

Paul McCloskey looks set to face the former footballer in late April early May- and the loyal ‘Dudey Army’ will be as upset as the former European champion that he couldn’t entice a big time American name to Belfast.

However, as Mirror Sport exclusively revealed last month promoter Eddie Hearn will appease Irish fans by having Ireland’s first Prizefighter as under card to the not too inspiring main event.

Hearn initially planned an international heavyweight version of the knockout tournament, but Mirror Sport has learnt plans are now underway for a mouth watering all Irish middleweight event.

“The Prizefighter will booster the event,” McCloskey’s manager and father in law Francie McNicholl explained.

“There was plans to do a Prizefighter the Internationals at heavyweight, but that changed recently to an Irish versus English middleweight tournament. Now having talked to Eddie today its more likely it will be a Prizefighter broadcast on Sky with eight Irish middleweights. The feeling was the Irish English thing might not work depending on the draw. You could end up with two Irish or two English guys in the final. Also I think from the reaction Eddie got on socail networks he found out there was enough Irish fighters to make a great card. If it comes off it would be a massive event and one that will capture the attention of the Irish public.”

Ireland has Prizefighter previous with Martin ‘The Iron man’ Rogan winning the inaugural event in thrilling fashion. Willie Casey also used the knock out knock out tournament to propel him to European title glory whilst Cuban Rebel Mike Perez won the most watched SKY Boxing show of 2011. It now looks like an Irish middleweight will get the chance to star and shine on SKY by winning an all irish version of the thrilling tournament.