Should Hatton Retire?

Normally I wouldn’t advise a fighter as great as Ricky Hatton to retire this early on in his career, considering he’s only 29 years-old and would appear to have a lot of mileage left ahead of him, but in his case, I think it’s best that he hang up his gloves and call it a day. He’s clearly not the same fighter he was and doesn’t really need any more money at this stage of his career, having just earned a $7.2 million dollar payday for his 10th round TKO loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the most part, Hatton appears to have all his faculties as he can carry on a decent conversation without the usual slurring of words that come from brawlers such as Hatton.

He’s done more than a fighter like him should have accomplished in his career, beating skilled fighters like Kostya Tszyu, albeit at the end of his career, and Jose Luis Castillo. All the great things that Hatton has accomplished are things that he can be proud of as he looks back at his once great boxing career, but if he decides to continue on with boxing, I don’t see a lot of positive things happening for him from this point on. Of course, Hatton could prolong his career the way many European fighters do by mostly fighting easy fights against mainly European fighters, but somehow, I don’t see Hatton following this course. He’s the type that will want to take on the best fighters, no matter what country they come from.

For that reason, I see Hatton getting brutally stopped in future bouts against the top flight boxers in the junior welterweight division, where Hatton is going to be moving back down to following his humiliating loss to Mayweather. However, it’s one thing being beaten by Mayweather, who is considered the best fighter in all of boxing, but quite another thing to be soundly beaten by fighters such as Paulie Malignaggi, Ricardo Torres, Junior Witter, Andreas Kotelnik, and Herman Ngoudjo.

For Hatton’s sake, I hope he retires before he has to face these indignities and end his career on a sour note. Mayweather had it fight when he mentioned that he was going to retire from boxing rather than letting boxing retire him. Hatton needs to follow this advise before it’s too late.