By Rusty Nate: The time is nearly upon us when the “Hitman” Ricky Hatton finally makes his return to boxing. In a little over 48 hours the world will awaken to stories of “Wow, he proved us wrong” or “Hatton a shadow of his former self, we told you so”.

I believe Hatton will win Saturday’s fight regardless of the skill & fitness level he has managed to claw back. The reasons I think that are 2 fold……..

1 – I’ve always been a big fan of Hatton and so my heart (maybe stupidly) tells me “there is no way he loses”. There’s a bit of honesty for you rarely said by a writer, particularly on these forums. Ultimately this could go horribly wrong but my heart makes me positive that he is going to be the Ricky of old at least until the first bell sounds when reality could kick in. We’ll see.

2 – More importantly than the first point, I honestly don’t think Hatton or the team around him is stupid. They have never really made bad decisions regarding Ricky’s Career in the past (that was all Frank Warren surprise surprise J). This fact leads me to believe that they know what they are doing and that Ricky truly is back to a really good standard. They would not risk his health in the ring.

Either way I can tell you that on Saturday night at the MEN Arena I, along with 20,000 other fans, will once again allow our hearts to overrule our heads when Ricky steps through the ropes and goes to war.

If he wins and wins convincingly then he has a lot of options ahead of him for the next fight.

If he wins badly and looks like he is scrapping through then I will seriously fear for his health if he decides to box again against a bigger name.

If he loses then I am afraid the ride is over, the park is closed and Ricky Hatton will have no choice but to retire in the knowledge that he gave it everything he could, created unforgettable nights for his thousands of fans to remember and will go down in the record books as an Undefeated 3 time, 2 weight world champion before he met Floyd.

Good luck to you Ricky, my heart is 100% behind you……………

But my head is hanging back just a little nervous, waiting and hoping not to see the worse happen……..