The 32 year-old was put down in the first from a glancing blow which could have easily have been called a slip by referee Howard Foster and seemed to be hampered by nose damage throughout the fight.
‘Dudey’ felt Prescott’s power hard to deal with for the first four or five rounds until the Colombian seemed to tire in the second half of the fight and McCloskey took control from the eighth, winning four of the last five rounds on my card.
Prescott, 28, rallied in the twelfth and seemed to have done enough early on to take the decision although the judges disagreed giving the former European champion the victory 115-113 and 114-113 twice to earn McCloskey a second world title.
In the chief support bout, Carl Frampton improved to 11-0 and picked up the Commonwealth super-bantamweight title with a fourth round stoppage win over Australian Mark Quon.
