By Scott Gilfoid: 33-year-old former world champion Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) will be fighting in front of a packed house on November 24th in his comeback fight at the Manchester Arena (formerly M.E.N Arena), in Manchester, Lancashire, United Kingdom. According to Hattonboxing.com, 18,000 tickets have already been purchased for Hatton’s fight on November 24th in the first 48 hours of having gone on sale. There’s only 1000 tickets left and those will likely be gone in a short period of time.

What is really strange about this is that Hatton’s opponent hasn’t been named yet but that hasn’t stopped his fans from scooping up tickets by the barrel full anyway.

Hatton hasn’t fought in three years and he says his goal in coming back is to go after one of the world titles. He’s going to have to take things slowly if he’s going to find any success, because it would be foolhardy for him to immediately face a quality opponent in his first fight back on November 24th. But you can expect Hatton to start going after top names real soon even if he does face a weak opponent on the 24th of November. It’s pretty typical of fighters when making comebacks. They tend to bite off more than they can chew and end up suffering a terrible setback and then they often get discouraged and re-retire again.

This could be Hatton’s fate because he needs a lot of tune-ups before he’s ready to fight a top tier guy again in my estimation. Hatton has been knocked out in two out of his last four fights and badly hurt in three of the four. He needs to take things really slow if he’s smart. My guess is his ego will get the better of him and he’ll jump too soon into a tough fight and get knocked out for his troubles.

Hatton doesn’t have a lot of options in terms of what he can with his fighting style. He’s short and not particularly fast on his feet. The only way Hatton can fight is for him to slug it out with his opponents on the inside, and if he does this he’s going to take a ton of punishment. It’s one thing for a young guy to absorb a lot of punishment, but for an old guy like Hatton that’s been out of the sport for three years, it’s a recipe for disaster.