Was Hatton an Accidental Champion?
June 16th, 2009
By Scott Gilfoid: When I look at Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KOs) career I wonder how he was able to ever hold down a title with his limited boxing skills. As someone mentioned earlier today, Hatton may have been an accidental champion. Hatton captured the IBF light welterweight title in a controversial match with 36-year-old Kostya Tszyu in June 2005, and then defended the title against fighters that were limited in ability.
It was clearly a mistake for Kostya to defend his title in a hostile arena in England where he was forced to deal with a ton of adversity rather than a neutral country like the United States. That was a huge mistake by Tszyu, and he might as well have handed his title away to Hatton, because of without the similar ability to wrestle on the inside like Hatton, Tszyu was basically out of his element.
It was like a boxer going into the ring against a fighter that is using a combination of wrestling and boxing. More often than not, the fighter that is skilled at wrestling and fighting on the inside will win the fight.
However, the holding that Hatton did in that fight seemed to go a step too far from what I could make out and there probably should have been multiple penalizations and eventually a disqualification of Hatton because he seemed to be turning the bout into a hybrid MMA fight rather than a traditional boxing match.
Following the win over Tszyu, Hatton went on to beat Carlos Maussa, Juan Urango, Jose Luis Castillo, Juan Lascano and Paul Malignaggi at light welterweight, while losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Hatton had a controversial 12 round decision win over Luis Collazo in May 2006, and appeared to lose that fight.
The losses to Pacquiao and Mayweather seemed to highlight Hatton’s severe limitations as a fighter. While many boxing experts and fans alike have jumped to the conclusion that Hatton is a shot fighter, I completely disagree. Hatton isn’t shot at all.
He’s just a fighter that perhaps should have never been a champion to begin with because of the nature in which he got his victory over Tszyu and once he had to face some tough opponents where he couldn’t wrestle, the logical conclusion was that he would be knocked out or beaten severely.
If Hatton had been disqualified in his bout with Tszyu, then Hatton would have been much less of a factor than he turned out to be because he wouldn’t have likely won a major title with Tszyu holding down the IBF light welterweight title and Hatton would have had to settle for winning the little known IBO belt.
I doubt that Hatton would have ever been given a chance against Collazo for his welterweight title, and even if he had, I think the judges would have scored it differently with Collazo getting the victory. Things would have been completely different with Hatton’s career.
He probably would have been limited to fighting mainly on the local scene in England, because he would have lost to Tszyu and there would have never been all the needless hype that came about because of his win over Tszyu. Four years later, nature is self correcting with Hatton being put in his rightful place being stopped by Mayweather and Pacquiao, and now weighing his options for his boxing career?
I say again, Hatton isn’t a shot fighter. This is just his true talent, or lack thereof, being exposed now that he’s finally fighting some good opponents. Had Hatton fought Junior Witter, Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Victor Ortiz or Ricardo Torres long ago, we’d likely be seeing Hatton in the same place where he is now except that he’d probably have an additional five losses on his record instead of just two.
Tags: 19 Responses to “Was Hatton an Accidental Champion?”
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I have never heard of any fighter who became the world WBA champion in 2 weight classes plus the IBF
and IBO and Ring Magazine Champion and then rule his
division as undisputed World Champion for five years
accidently.
Ricky Hatton is no doubt the real deal. He took on
anyone who was at their best.
You can’t keep a good man down. Hatton will be back.
Ha ha, its no wonder that they don’t let you write about current boxing events. D class writer, that is an even worse rating than Hatton.
Hatton is not in the same leauge as Mayweather and the Manny Pacquiao, but honestly if you think a boxer can accidentally be a world champion then you are deluded.
Now don’t you have yet another Calzaghe article to write? Dig something from the past out again, as I say they only let you write old news, leave current boxing news to the better writers
fact is hatton fought 2 greats and lost, fought 2 has beens and won (would have lost to both in their prime btw)
Dont speculate, anything can happen in a ring. Hatton was very effective aggresion wise a few years ago and would have given castillo problems as well as Kosta.
fact is hatton fought 2 greats and lost, fought 2 has beens and won (would have lost to both in their prime btw) and apart from that beat a lot of average to good fighters.
hattons lifestyle caught up with him people say, but the truth is, his lifestyle got him where he was, he was the peoples champion, he sold tickets, who else would take 30000 fans to vegas?
he got the big fights cuz he bought the following with him.
Witter for instance lives a clean lifestyle, result is he has no fans, therefore will never be box office vegas style.
PBF, Pacman, Castillo and Tszyu would never have fought Witter for that reason.
Hatton made the very best of his ‘limited’ boxing ability and good luck to the fella, he gave me lots of pleasure.
I was in the MEN when he beat Tszyu, in Vegas when PBF beat him as well as countless other fights he had.
Get retired Ricky and thanks for the memories mate
Hatton does not have 2 losses; He has 3; He got the crap kicked out of him by Collazo; one of the worst decisions I ever saw
a supreme wbf champ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
for the first time the raw truth about the so called hitman,fully agree with every word scott,hatton is a definite accidental champ no skills at all,really a bum hyped up to the sky for fk all,the lasting memory of hatton is deservedly that picture above ,it matches the article to a tee
Scott, have you always annoyed people?
Next you’ll be telling us that Ricky Hatton only got his title shot because he drunkenly stumbled out of the kebab shop at 2 am and wandered into the MEN arena which just so happened to contain Kostya Tszyu.
My memory is bit sketchy too and I can’t quite remember how he won that night. Was it with a pint glass or did run Kostya over whilst joyriding?
Even that seems a bit far fetched though doesn’t it Scott? Between you and me I think that Hatton’s victory was a trick, a hologram and the crowd was nothing more than an elaborate digital matte painting.
Honestly, the lengths us British will go to in order to manfacture a box office commodity is quite outrageous.
Was Ali an accidental champion because he lost to a guy called Spinks who had only had 7 pro fights??? No, I didn’t think so… Stop the bashing both Girlfoid and Adam, do one you hating tosspot.
Oh and Kosta gave Hatton a lot of low blows in the fight scott. Face it, hatton overpowered him and was landing better punches.
Ha Ha your very funny an accidental two weight world champion…I mean com’on be serious, this is a professional highly competitive you don’t do the things Hatton by accident. Yeah he came up short against the very best, the fight with Kostya Tszyu was a fair win. Boxing is a mans sport, you hit, get hit, push and move for position to pull off the right shots when needed, and as i remember Tszyu was hardly shy in that fight. Hatton did what he was good at.
I dont think it’s possible to hold onto titles as long as Ricky did unless your the real deal. He only lost twice, and both of them were considered best in the world at that point. This is another pointless article by a ‘journalist’ who is biased and more importantly plain stupid.
I think so……
I dont think you can accidentally become WBA Champ at two weights and an IBF champ. I dont think you can accidentally become the ring magazine champ of the light welter weight.
This is a fact of life when your winning every one loves you, they lick your ass. Media and so called fans
You lose a couple of fights to top opponents
suddenly your nobody.
Ricky Hatton was never a pound for pound great. But then again, not many fighters are. He lost to two truley exceptional fighters…but at least he had the guts to put his reputation and his legacy on the line to do it. So many fighters are over protected and never go out on a limb to take those monumentous bouts.
Hatton legitimately rules the 10 stone divsion for four years. It’s only after the Witter win that Bradley has come to anyones attention. He is boring to watch and isn’t really proven. Hatton would have eaten him up, and got no props for it. Much in the way he did against fellow champion Mallinaggi who many on this site tipped to beat Hatton. Kendall Holt and Ricardo Torres are REAL B list fighters, beating them would be no more significant than beating Jaun Urango – who is now a world champion in his own right and very nearly won an additional tittle at Welterweight. Urango I believe would beat Holt, Torres and Bradley.
I suppose stopping Castillo was meaningless aswell, as he had never achieved anything or beaten anybody either?
No matter how you cut it, Ricky WAS the man at light welter, but his time has past. He was never elite, but he was entertaining, charismatic and a throwback to those great, battling brawlers.
Yes hattons gonna enjoy all the money he made, pretty good for a c-class fighter.
Ricky was no doubt a paper champion and never belonged in the ring with either Floyd or Pacquaio. He lost his fight to Collazo and looked like sht against b-class boxers like Urango and Lazcano.Ricky got proped up by the brits to be some great thing and almost got the man killed.Ricky is a B-Class fighter and a C-Class boxer.He was overrated from the start and should stay in the pub because a beer is the only thing he’ll be knocking down.
….wait, with me saying that above is like I’m agreeing with you..:lol:
Well you are right though. Hatton is not a shot but rather he doesn’t have enough skills to box some world boxers
That picture above explains a thousand of words
But I can’t agree with you here. Hatton is still a great boxer or should I say a “B-Class” its just that his skill is not enough for world boxers like Manny and Floyd.