Is Hatton Un-trainable At This Point in His Career?

By William Mackay: In looking at the results of Ricky Hatton’s recent fight with Manny Pacquiao, I’m starting to come to the conclusion that Hatton is an old dog that can’t learn new tricks and might beyond the point of being able to take training. Despite having one of the best trainers in boxing, Hatton failed to utilize much of anything that Mayweather Sr. was trying to teach Hatton in the ring, and because of that Hatton was destroyed by Pacquiao in two short brutal rounds last weekend.

For the most part, it seemed like Hatton trained himself because he seemed to be disconnected with Mayweather Sr. much of the time during the HBO Pacquiao-Hatton 24/7 series. It has been said that Hatton wasn’t happy that Mayweather Sr. had showed up late to a few of the training sessions and that he wasn’t getting along with Hatton’s assistant trainer, but that shouldn’t be an excuse not to take in the teachings by Mayweather Sr.

It was on Hatton to absorb what Mayweather Sr. was trying to show him and then follow through with it by showing it in the ring against Pacquiao. Whatever was keeping Hatton from taking in the training, he should have spoken up well before the fight and had a man to man talk with Mayweather Sr. if something was bothering Hatton.

When Hatton entered the ring against Pacquiao, you could see that things weren’t right. Hatton looked scared, like he knew he was in trouble. Bernard Hopkins, who was in the ring watching Hatton, had a look on his face as if he could tell things weren’t right with Hatton.

In that case, Hatton should have focused on every bit of knowledge that he got from Mayweather Sr., because Hatton wasn’t going to be able to beat a fighter like Pacquiao using his old style taught to him by Billy Graham.

We saw how good that style worked against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Juan Lazcano. Who knows? Perhaps Hatton would have lost anyway even if he did follow every bit of knowledge that Mayweather Sr. was attempting to teach him to the letter, but we’ll never know that because Hatton went out and used his old brawling style of fighting that he had learned under Billy Graham many years ago and was quickly knocked down twice in the 1st round.

Hatton had a chance in between rounds to snap out of it and start using what Mayweather Sr. had been trying to teach him. However, in the 2nd round, Hatton fought in the same manner that he had fought in the 1st round and was quickly knocked out.

This leaves me wondering whether Hatton doesn’t have the ability to take in new information at this point in his career or if it was something where Hatton felt that he knew better than his trainer Mayweather Sr. Why Hatton could think something like that, I have no idea, because Hatton’s old style of fighting had already been shown to be ineffective against Mayweather Jr. and Lazcano, so it would be nutty for Hatton to keep fighting like this against an even better fighter in Pacquiao.

This is why I think it wasn’t a case of Hatton going with his own style on purpose, because he’s the one that made the effort to get Mayweather Sr., and I can’t imagine he would not want to use what he was trying to teach him. More likely, Hatton just wasn’t able to sufficiently learn Mayweather Sr’s training well enough to use it in a fight.

It’s like a person training in boxing or Karate and then when they get into an actual fight, they use none of it and just flail their arms like they used to before they started training. It’s all about instinct.

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