By Eric Thomas: In the latest boxing news, former light welterweight champion Ricky Hatton (44-1, 31 KOs) is reportedly not interested in a bout with 6-weight world champion Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) in September, so says Hatton’s father, Ray, according to the BBC. Apparently, Hatton feels that the bout is too soon after Ricky Hatton’s recent defeat of Juan Lazcano, a fight that took place two weeks ago and turned out to be a much tougher fight than Hatton has probably expected it would be.
Hatton has a scheduled bout with IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi in November, and that’s the fight that Hatton has his mind on. At the same time, Hatton’s father is holding out hope that Floyd Mayweather Jr. may come out of retirement, which is the fight that Ricky really wants bad because of his prior 10-round TKO loss to Mayweather in December 2007. Hatton badly wants to avenge the defeat, according to sources, because he felt that he didn’t fight at his optimal level in that bout.
At this point, other than Malignaggi and possibly De La Hoya if he’s still interested in Hatton after this, there may not be a possibility for Hatton to get a chance to avenge his defeat to Mayweather. In his announcement last week, it seemed as if Mayweather was dead serious this time about his retirement, which he said will be permanent. Indeed, if Mayweather was comfortable about canceling the September bout with De La Hoya, I can’t see Mayweather changing his mind later on down the road just so that he can fight Hatton, a fighter that he defeated even easier than he did Hatton.
Why should he be? Anyone who saw that fight knows that it wasn’t the least bit competitive and unless Mayweather was to suddenly blow through $50 million in earnings in a short period of time, it’s probably for the best not to even hope that he’ll have a change of mind at any time in the near future. I might indeed change his mind years from now, but by then Hatton, judging by the way he’s looked in his last couple of fights, will have long been defeated over and over, and out of the boxing game. It’s too bad, because Mayweather should have at least stayed on long enough to finish both Hatton and De La Hoya, given the fact that both of them appear to be in the death spiral of their once excellent careers.
It remains to be seen whether De La Hoya might still be interested in fighting Hatton after he finishes with his fight with Malignaggi in November. Certainly, Hatton will likely come out the winner in that fight, he’s made sure of that fact by choosing the weaker punching Malignaggi over the much tougher three other light welterweights, Ricardo Torres , Timothy Bradley and Andreas Kotelnik. In all but Kotelnik’s case, Hatton would be in deep trouble and would be extremely lucky to escape with a win as far as I’m concerned.