By David Lahr: Ricky Hatton continues to bide his time waiting for something or someone to get him off the couch and back into the boxing ring. Since being humbled in a 2nd round knockout loss to Manny Pacquiao in May, Hatton has had problems making a decision about whether he wants to continue fighting. Recently, Hatton hinted that he’d like to possibly fight Juan Manuel Marquez if he can get by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in September.
I think that’s a waste of time for Hatton, because not only would it likely bring in much less money than a fight with Khan, but it’s also a worse match up for Hatton.
Marquez is a skilled counter puncher and he’ll in all probability make mincemeat of Hatton’s face, taking advantage of Hatton’s lack of defense by ripping him apart each time that Hatton throws one of his trademark leaping left hooks.
Marquez would be a bad match up for Hatton and very likely finish Ricky off and send him into retirement on a losing note. Khan is a different story. He’s someone that Hatton would have a good chance at beating. However, Hatton can’t afford to sit by and wait for Khan to build up a better following around the globe, because there’s too much of a danger that Khan will be knocked out again before Hatton gets his paws on him.
There is talk of Khan fighting opponents like Marcos Maidana, Junior Witter or even Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the future, and no matter which one wins the Khan lottery, I see Amir getting knocked as bad as he did in his fight with Breidis Prescott last year.
This is why Hatton needs to hit while the iron is hot and accept a fight with Khan before the others fighters get a shot at destroying Khan and imploding his status as a new star in the sport of boxing. Hatton can’t blow it this time. He already screwed up royally by making the decision to fight Paulie Malignaggi rather than Oscar De La Hoya in 2008.
I have no clue why Hatton chose to shoot himself in the foot by skipping a shot against De La Hoya for a fight with Malignaggi, but perhaps he thought that De La Hoya would still be there in the future for him to fight. If that’s the case, Hatton should have taken a glance at De La Hoya’s record at the time and noticed that he was losing pretty much every fight against quality opposition and only beating flawed opponents.
Instead, Manny Pacquiao stepped up and took the fight with De La Hoya, and beat him black and blue, sending Oscar into retirement. Say what you want about Hatton being a shot fighter, I think he would have had just a good a chance of beating De La Hoya as Pacquiao did on that night.
De La Hoya would have been too weak to land anything big enough to hurt Hatton. Okay, so it was probably a huge blunder on Hatton’s part by deciding to fight Malignaggi instead of De La Hoya. At that time, Hatton was saying that he wanted to recapture his International Boxing Federation light welterweight title, but that quickly went out the window when Malignaggi vacated the title before the Hatton fight. This meant that Hatton was fighting Malignaggi for no belt other than his own little known IBO title. What a waste of time.
Hatton can’t afford to shoot himself in the foot again and let another big opportunity go by. He needs to take the fight with Khan while Amir is still relatively whole. Once Khan gets put in with a talented fighter like Maidana, Witter or Mayweather, Hatton will be kicking himself for not taking advantage of a fight with Khan while he still could, because Amir will likely be badly exposed by one of those fighters and his value will drop dramatically afterwards.
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