Hatton says he doesn’t think he’ll fight again – News

By Boxing News - 06/09/2010 - Comments

By William Mackay: Former two-time champion Ricky Hatton has been out of action for over a year now since being stopped in a brutal 2nd round knockout a year ago against Manny Pacquiao in May 2009. Once in shape, muscular and lean, Hatton is now fleshy, rotund and carrying around 50 to 60 extra pounds of fat on small 5’6” frame. Hatton’s biggest fans are hoping that he’ll come back at least for one more fight before officially hanging up the gloves for good.

However, Hatton seems uninterested in coming back to the sport that has made him a rich man. In an interview at the Gulfnews.com, Hatton said “Boxing started off as a habit and it ended up giving me some money and making me a little bit of a better person. But I don’t think I will have a fight again. But you can never say never as I have not announced officially that I won’t be boxing. At the moment I don’t have any fire in the belly for a fight or to get myself to a gym. But it has been only 13 months and I am only 31, so never count me out.”

This is pretty much what Hatton has been saying over and over again since he was blasted out by Pacquiao a little more than a year ago. But it’s looking like Hatton will retire without officially retiring. If he waits too much longer in deciding to make a comeback, the decision will have been made for him because he’ll likely be too old, and too fat to come back.

Hatton needs to make the decision now while he’s still relatively young. The biggest problem for Hatton is that the light welterweight division, where he used to fight, has gotten a lot better in the past year and it’s questionable whether Hatton could have beaten some of the fighters there even in his prime. Now a year a later, Hatton is has ballooned up in weight and doesn’t look anything like his old self.

It’s possible that he can come back, but the way it’s looking it seems that Hatton will follow the lead of Kostya Tszyu by retiring without officially retiring. By keeping the door open, Hatton can always come back but realistically there won’t be much chance of Hatton winning when/if he does come back if he waits too much longer, unless, of course, Hatton picks a really soft opponent when he does come back. I doubt Hatton would do that because he has too much pride and probably wouldn’t want to face the criticism he would get.

Right now, Hatton might be still good enough to beat someone like Michael Katsidis, but it would depend on whether Hatton’s chin is still the same after his loss to Pacquiao. It would also depend on whether Hatton took off all the weight slowly rather than over a three month period in a rush job.

I think Hatton could probably burn the 50 to 60 pounds of blubber off in three months but I think he would be much weaker for having it so quickly. Hatton should take his time to burn that kind of blubber off because that’s just too much weight to be taken off in only three months without Hatton stripping off muscle at the same time he’s reducing the lard that he’s packed on.



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