By Scott Gilfoid: In yesterday’s meeting with Muhammad Ali in Manchester, former light welterweight and welterweight champion Ricky Hatton looked badly out of shape, appearing to weigh in the neighborhood of 170 to 190 pounds. That may not sound like a lot of weight for some boxing fans, but for Hatton, who fights at 140, that’s a lot of weight.
Judging from Hatton’s pictures, I’d put Hatton around 190, meaning that if Ricky wants to fight again at light welterweight, he’ll have to melt off a cool 40 to 50 pounds of blubber. I suppose Hatton can do it in 14 or 15 weeks of back breaking training, but I don’t know whether the fighter that emerges from that training camp will have anything left to fight at that point.
I have my doubts. Having taken off 40 to 50 pounds myself through over a six month period, I can tell you that I wasn’t nearly as strong as I was before putting on all that lard. I lost a ton of strength in taking the weight off each time and was a lot weaker than I was before I started putting on that kind of weight.
Hatton may be a special kind of athlete, but I doubt that he’s immune to the side effects that dramatic weight loss has on a person in terms of strength. This is important for Hatton, because if Ricky ever does make a comeback and resume his boxing career, the opponents he’ll be facing are fighters that haven’t had to take off a massive amount of weight to get to fighting weight.
Thus, they’ll be much stronger and won’t have to worry about being weakened by going through dramatic fat reduction process during training camp. The names that have been mentioned for possible future opponents for Hatton – Amir Khan and Juan Diaz – are examples of fighters that stay in shape year round. Despite both of them having lesser skills in my view than Hatton, I think each of them would have a big advantage over Hatton if Ricky has to drop a lot of weight during training camp.
I’m kind of shocked that Hatton has put on so much weight in only three short months. To get to Hatton’s size, he must have been putting on close to 15 pounds of pure blubber every month. Left to his devise, I’m wondering how much weight Hatton will have put on in another three months.
I doubt it will be as much as he put on in the first three months, but even if it’s only a conservative five pounds a month, which I highly doubt, that would put Hatton in the neighborhood of 200 pounds or more. For a fighter who’s only 5’7”, that would be an absurd amount of weight to have to take off.
I personally couldn’t do it and have enough strength left to fight competitively. I could take it off, don’t get me wrong, but I would be weak as anything come fight time, even if I took if off slowly over a years time. Putting on a huge amount of weight also does things to your body.
When a person takes that kind of weight off, say more than 40 or more pounds, the skin gets loose around the person’s face, arms and midsection. That loose skin won’t go away and will just hang there looking really bad. I suppose it doesn’t matter, but that’s probably not a pleasant experience to have to live with it hanging around there.
I’ve seen other fighters like Riddick Bowe put on a lot of weight during his career, but he was never the same fighter after he started having weight problems. I’d hate to think what all that blubber might be doing to Hatton’s once promising career.
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