Hatton Hasn’t Lost His Punch Resistance. He Just Can’t See the Punches Coming

By Scott Gilfoid: All these so-called boxing experts saying that Ricky Hatton has lost his ability to take a punch are a million miles off in diagnosing Hatton’s real problem. If you want to know the real problem it’s Hatton’s inability to see the punches coming. That’s the real reason that Hatton lost to both Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao in my view. If you look at Hatton’s prior fights, he’s had problems against the quicker punchers like Luis Collazo, and done well against the slower ones that Hatton could see the punches coming.

Of course, knowing this doesn’t change the fact that Hatton has now been knocked out in two of his last four fights, but it does give Hatton something to work with should he decide to continue his boxing career and fight on. The good news is that Hatton can partially fix his problem with not seeing the faster shots by at least keeping his guard up more.

Hatton has gotten into a bad habit of plodding forward with his hands down in recent years and he’s taken a lot of punishment because of that. Hatton is going to have to change that if he plans on continuing to win his fights.

I’m sure that Hatton can beat the same B and C level fighters that he built most of his record on, but for Hatton to be the A-class fighters like Kendall Holt, Timothy Bradley, Junior Witter, Victor Ortiz and Ricardo Torres, Hatton is going to need to learn to keep his guard up at all times because those fighters have excellent power and good hand speed as well.

Hatton isn’t going to be able to take their shots if he continues to get hit cleanly while he lunges in blindly trying to connect with his big left hooks. That’s another thing that needs to be changed. Hatton needs to stop trying to throw his leaping left hooks that he likes to throw a lot.

I remember seeing Hatton earlier in his career when he was fighting an old 40-year-old Vince Philips, and I remember how Philips was nailing Hatton with big right hands when Hatton would leap in with left hooks. I thought then that Hatton would need to stop throwing these punches once he got to a higher class of fighter or risk getting knocked out.

Unfortunately, Hatton is still trying to throw the same punch and is getting belted often as he attempts to throw them. Pacquiao timed Hatton when Ricky would attempt to throw these punches and would nail him with right hands. Hatton should have backed off and focused more on his jab, because he could have saved himself a lot of needless punishment that way.

Hatton is going to have to work on both his defense and his tendency to throw his leaping hooks if he wants to keep on winning. I wish I could say that he will, but I kind of doubt it. I think Hatton will probably continue to fight just like he did last Saturday night, and probably keep getting drilled in the fast as he moves forward with his guard down.

The difference next time will be that Hatton’s opponent will be much more beatable and not nearly in the class of Mayweather or Pacquiao. Hatton will then be able to get away with his bad offensive and defensive habits without paying the price for it.

However, if Hatton sticks around longer than one fight, I can see him getting the desire to fight another top level fighter and at that time we’ll probably see Hatton get knocked out again.

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