Hatton-Pacquiao: Look for Ricky to Take a Terrible Beating

By Boxing News - 04/29/2009 - Comments

hatton4542355By Michael Lieberman: There’s only three more days left before Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao meet up in the ring on Saturday night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The closer we get to D-day, the more boxing fans and writers seem to be jumping off the Hatton ship and putting their money on Pacquiao to win the fight. It isn’t because Pacquiao is looked at as invincible, because he’s far from that, but mostly because of how good Pacquiao has looked in beating his last four opponents Marco Antonio Barrera, Juan Manuel Marquez, David Diaz and Oscar De La Hoya.

Only the Marquez fight was close, and the only reason that fight was close was because Marquez was smart enough to know that he would be destroyed if he tried to do battle with Pacquiao. I’d like to think that Hatton will be equally smart and chose to box with Pacquiao rather than foolishly try to knock him out, but I think Hatton won’t be able to resist fighting in the style that he always does.

That unfortunately will be his undoing. Hatton is going into this fight with very little experience against top quality fighters. Indeed, of Hatton’s entire resume, I can only pick out two fighters – Luis Collazo and Floyd Mayweather Jr. – that I consider to be truly world class fighters.

The rest of them are either C-level or B level fighters. I include Kostya Tszyu and Jose Luis Castillo as being two former A-class champions, who by the time that Hatton fought them, had deteriorated to the B-classification. Whether Hatton knows this or not, this is going to be a major problem for him on Saturday night against Pacquiao.

When you’re facing a world class fighter like Pacquiao, you end up paying to price if you cut corners to get to him. For sure, the lack of quality opposition has done wonders to Hatton’s record, keeping it much better than it probably would be if he were to have faced nothing but the pure cream of the crop opponents during his career.

But, if Hatton had taken on a murderer’s row of top fighters, there’s a good chance he’d have too many losses to be even considered for a fight against Pacquiao. As we saw in the John Duddy vs. Billy Lyell fight this past weekend, when you take a good fighter that has been matched very carefully to ensure that they keep winning and then put them in with a fighter that has taken on a lot of quality fighters in their career, bad things can happen to the fighter with the padded record.

On Saturday night, I see Hatton, with his pumped up record filled with a lot of soft opponents, getting beaten to a pulp by Pacquiao. I’d like to think that I’ll be wrong and that somehow Hatton can get the win, but based on his prior work history in his career, he’s simply not ready for a fighter in Pacquiao’s class.

Like I said, you can’t cut corners when facing top talent. For a fighter like Pacquiao, there’s prerequisite opponents that Hatton would need to have faced in order to be prepared for the kind of firepower that Pacquiao will bringing to the fight on Saturday night. Those fighters that Hatton should have fought are Junior Witter, Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Ricardo Torres and Victor Ortiz.

Somehow, Hatton chose not to fight them, and instead went after the much easier Paulie Malignaggi and Juan Lazcano instead. Those fights may have kept Hatton on the winning track, but they stunted his development as a fighter and kept him from progressing.

Now, Hatton will be skipping ahead two levels to face an even better fighter in Pacquiao, and all without the needed fights that could have prepared Hatton for this fight. By jumping ahead and avoiding them, Hatton only ended up cheating himself, because he’s the one that will be hurt on Saturday night, not them.



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