Hatton Has to Control His Savage Instincts To Brawl

By Boxing News - 02/18/2009 - Comments

hatton3243537By Michael Lieberman: Having gotten way too comfortable with thrashing through most of his lower quality opposition by pure brute force, Ricky Hatton (45-1, 32 KOs) now finds himself against the new breed of light welterweight in Manny Pacquiao, who not only can punch with incredible power but also has a wide range of other abilities to fall back on and utilize consistently in his bouts.

What we have here with Hatton is an old dinosaur that has become accustomed to picking walking over the smaller forest dwellers without having to use his wits and is now facing a full grown Tyrannosaurs Rex without the thinking process needed in order to beat this huge beast.

That, my friends, is unfortunate, because in facing mostly older, washed up fighters and those without skills (other than Floyd Mayweather Jr.) it has stunted Hatton’s abilities to cope with better fighters like Pacquiao. I call Hatton’s latest addition of Floyd Mayweather Sr. as a cry for help, someone to try and rescue him from himself to try and bring him, after 12 years as a pro, some boxing skills needed to fend off talented fighters like Pacquiao.

It may be too late for that I’m afraid. In concentrating almost entirely on slugging in his career, Hatton has largely ignored developing his other boxing skills and finds himself in one of the biggest matches of his career against Pacquiao without the expertise needed to win the fight. Hatton has always been someone that goes right after his opponents, throwing big hooks and body shots, trying to take them out.

Against the lesser light welterweights of yesterday, he was effective in getting away with running over them on brute force alone. However, with Pacquiao, a much more advanced fighter than the mostly mediocre light welterweights that Hatton has fought in his career, he’s finding himself against a real fighter and not one of his light hitting opponents like Paulie Malignaggi.

I suppose this is what happens when you stay away from fighting the crème of the crop for awhile. Mayweather was Hatton’s last quality fight, and judging from how badly he looked against Juan Lazcano and Malignaggi, Hatton’s learned nothing in the past two years since losing to Mayweather.

Now, you take Ricky and put him in with a fighter as talented as Pacquiao, and, of course, negative things are going to happen. Maybe if Hatton had more time to train with Mayweather Sr. he could learn enough to keep him from getting beaten quite so badly, but for a fighter who has fought his entire career as a brawler, it’s probably too late for him to change his style enough to beat a good fighter like Pacquiao or one of the other top light welterweights.

If I was training Hatton, I’d tell him to jab and move and not stop for an instant, because he stands no chance against Pacquiao if he remains stationary. We’ve already seen what Pacquiao against David Diaz, a Hatton clone, who Pacquiao destroyed in a 9th round TKO in June 2008. Pacquiao beat him badly, hammering him with right hooks and straight left hands.

The fight was ridiculously one sided and like watching a massacre in a war zone. I see the same thing happening with Hatton. If Mayweather Sr. is on his game, he’ll have a rolled up newspaper to swat Hatton with while in training.

Each time that Hatton screws up and tries to brawl, Mayweather needs to swat him behind the ear and try to get him to unlearn all his poor brawling tactics that someone mistakenly drummed into his head. I figure if Hatton gets swatted enough, he might unlearn some of his wrong-headed ideas about fighting and show some more skills.

Maybe then he might stand a chance, but I have my doubts that Mayweather Sr. can make any major changes to Hatton’s limited style of fighting.



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