Did Pacquiao retire Hatton?

By Boxing News - 07/04/2010 - Comments

Image: Did Pacquiao retire Hatton?By William Mackay: It’s been ages sine Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) last fought. In fact, it’s been 14 months since Hatton was blasted into unconsciousness in a 2nd round knockout loss to Manny Pacquiao on May 2nd, 2009. I would have never guessed in a million years that Hatton would be knocked out so easily by Pacquiao.

It looked like a professional facing an amateur in that fight. Hatton didn’t serve his own purpose very well by rushing forward, despite the instructions from his trainer to stay back and box, and quickly sent down twice in the opening round. Hatton never did gather himself, as he continued to try and slug with Pacquiao in the next round and was destroyed almost immediately by a left hand thrown by Paccquiao.

The loss was a tough one for Hatton to swallow, to be sure. But he didn’t help himself by the way he reacted to it. Instead of getting back up, dusting himself off and working on what he did wrong, like most people do in the world when they fail at something,

Hatton instead retreated and has stayed away from the boxing ring, and has talked about wanting to get the hunger back before he resumes his career. Now over a year since Hatton last fought, and with him looking quite large from eating a little bit too much on a constant basis, it’s not looking like Hatton will be coming back any time soon and many boxing experts are assuming that Hatton won’t be coming back at all, period.

This means that Hatton’s last fight will have been his knockout defeat to Pacquiao. It’s hard not to look at that fight and assume that Hatton was shell shocked from that defeat and not able to put it past him and go forward with his career. For me, its hard to imagine that Hatton’s last fight of his career may very well be his knockout loss to Pacquiao.

That’s a really sad way to go. It’s like failing in a tough class at school and then just giving up rather than retaking the class, putting in hard work and possibly getting outside help to ensure that you pass it the next time around.

Hatton’s reaction to the knockout was perhaps even worse than the knockout itself, because he seems to have retreated from learning from it and getting past it. Hatton has enough money and doesn’t need to fight anymore, but I’m sure he didn’t want to have the last memory in the ring being one where he’s being peeled off the deck.



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