By Michael Lieberman: Now that Ricky Hatton in on the verge of signing for a fight with Manny Pacquiao, I’m wondering whether Hatton will threaten to retire if he loses to him like he did in his fight with Paulie Malignaggi. I’m really waiting to hear what he’ll say on this. Whether he does or not, a loss to Pacquiao will be a huge setback for Hatton and maybe put him in the same class as Oscar De La Hoya. Being made to look as awful is De La Hoya is a bad thing. Hatton has a lot to lose in this fight, and if he ends up looking like idiot, kissing the canvas, then a lot of his fans are going to bye-bye on that night.
It isn’t like Hatton has helped himself any, though. Since getting his backside handed to him in a 10th round stoppage to Mayweather in 2007, Hatton has sidestepped the best fighters in the light welterweight division.
Instead of fighting Timothy Bradley, Junior Witter, Kendall Holt, Ricardo Torres or Andreas Kotelnik, Hatton went after Juan Lazcano and Malignaggi. I don’t know about you, but for me, I don’t see either of those guys anywhere close to being as good as Witter, Bradley, Holt, Torres and Kotelnik, which makes me wonder about Hatton. Why is he not fighting the best in the light welterweight division? If Pacquiao beats up Hatton, he’s not going to have many easy choices for in front of him.
It isn’t like he can avoid fighting those guys, because all of the champions are now solid ones in the light welterweight division and there’s no more easy pickings for Hatton to beat. He might as well retire, I guess. Because his brawling style will be easily picked apart by the above mentioned fighters and he will probably be made to look really bad. He does have other options, I suppose. He probably could go after De La Hoya, and have a mega fight for recent losers to Pacquiao.
That would be great. Like a consolation bracket for fighters that have been knocked out by Pacquiao. I’m not sure how many tickets it would sell, but I’m sure Hatton and De La Hoya’s diehard fans would faithfully scoop up the tickets to watch the thing. Two losses isn’t all that bad, just look at De La Hoya. He’s lost four out of his last seven fights, and yet the fans keep buying tickets and purchasing his PPV bouts. I guess the same would hold true for Hatton. He still has a ways to go before he gets to six losses like De La Hoya, so it may not matter how badly he gets destroyed by Pacquiao.
He did, however, take his loss kind of hard to Mayweather. It’ll probably get easier to take over time, the losing. But maybe he should retire. I mean, if he’s not going to face the best fighters in the light welterweight division, then what’s the use of Hatton still fighting? He might as well retire if he’s just going to be skipping up and down in weight, taking on fighters from different weight classes without fighting the best in his own weight class.
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