News – Cooper Wants Hatton to Retire; DeGale vs. Kubin on May 15th

By Jason Kim: You can add Sir Henry Cooper to the ever growing list of former boxing stars that want Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KOs) to hang up the gloves and retire from the sport according to the Sportinglife. Copper, 75, said “Ricky should retire. He’s got the tell-tale signs now,” referring to Hatton’s two knockout losses in his last four fights to first Floyd Mayweather Jr. and then most recently to Manny Pacquiao in a 2nd round KO last Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Cooper thinks that Hatton’s aggressive fighting style, which often includes Ricky absorbing a lot of punishment has had a withering effect on his ability to take punishment like he used to be able to take earlier in his career.

Cooper points out that Hatton has made millions in the sport of boxing and doesn’t need to stick around any longer. Additionally, Cooper comments on Amir Khan, saying that he needs to slow down with his progress to try and be a star in the sport. Cooper would like for Khan to take his time and learn more before trying to step it up against better fighters at this early point in Khan’s career.

Hatton was seen drowning his sorrows by a Las Vegas poolside with his fiancé, drinking beer after beer on video. One would that Hatton doesn’t continue drink at this rate in the coming months because it might make it even more difficult for Ricky should he opt to continue with his boxing career.

In the past, Hatton has had to strip off huge amounts of weight in training camp, weight put on from excessive eating and drinking. The drinking is part of Hatton’s social activities in between fights, but it seems to have hurt him by making him put on weight.

James DeGale Looking to Fill the Vacuum Left Behind With the retirement of Joe Calzaghe

2008 middleweight Olympic Gold Medalist James DeGale (1-0) will be fighting for the 2nd time in his pro career on May 15th against undefeated Jindrich Kubin (5-0, 3 KOs) in a scheduled four round bout at the Odyssey Arena, in Belfast, Ireland. DeGale, 23, is hoping that he can step into the void left behind by undefeated World Boxing Organization super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe’s recent retirement.

However, for DeGale to do that, he’s going to have to perform much better than he did in his first fight, a four round decision over Vepkhia Tchilaia three months ago in February 2009. DeGale looked poor in that fight, winning by a lopsided decision in the scoring of the fight but looking lazy and disinterested for the most part.

Tchilaia was the kind of opponent that DeGale should have been able to easily defeat due to his superior boxing ability, but DeGale didn’t even come close to hurting his Georgian opponent in the four round bout.

If that wasn’t enough, the crowd began to boo DeGale by the 2nd round and would continue to boo in ever increasing volume into the end of the fight in the 4th round. DeGale fought much of the fight with his hands down at his waist, looking like a cheap imitation of Roy Jones Jr.

Although Jones in his younger days was almost impossible to hit due to his superior reflexes, DeGale proved far less skilled at getting out of the way of shots and was hit quite a number of times by Tchilaia before the bout eventually was over.

Besides his poor defense, DeGale showed no power in the fight and threw a lot of slapping punches that looked terribly amateurish. In watching the fight, I found it next to impossible to imagine DeGale being anything other than a regional champion, if that.

DeGale doesn’t have the power or defense to handle the big punchers on the world level, and if DeGale is truly serious about wanting to fill the void left behind by Calzaghe, then DeGale is going to have to find some power and defense somewhere.

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