By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Ricky Hatton says he sees both Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao as both being past their best fighters. He gives credit to Pacquiao for coming back from his brutal 6th round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez from two years ago, but he still sees him as being a fighter who has seen better days.
Hatton thinks that a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight would still bring in a lot of pay-per-view buys if the fight were made today, even though much of the interest in the fight has died down given the time that has gone by since they first attempted to negotiate a fight between them in 2009.
“It’s [Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri] is going to be a good fighter,” Hatton said to IFL TV. “It was a crushing knockout defeat. Any knockout is tough to come back from. I know when I got knocked out by Floyd Mayweather, anytime Juan Lazcano hit me, I felt like he was going to knock me out. I think he needed a little time to get his confidence back. But bit by bit, he’s coming back near his best performance. Mayweather had an off night [against Marcos Maidana], we give him that. Besides that, Mayweather is coming near the end of his career. You know, he’s past his best and Manny’s past his best. If the fight happens, it would still be a major fight.”
I think that both Mayweather and Pacquiao still have a heck of a lot left in the tank, so I don’t agree with Hatton with them being past their best. They’re so far ahead of everyone else in the welterweight division that it’s not even funny.
I think it’s pretty much academic at this point that there won’t be a Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight. I’m kind of surprised that Hatton is even wasting his breath about this. He should be talking about the Pacquiao-Algieri and Mayweather-Maidana 2 fights more in depth instead of talking about a Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight that has almost no chance of ever happening in this lifetime.
Hatton fought both Mayweather and Pacquiao in the past and was knocked out by both of them. Mayweather destroyed Hatton in 2007, while Pacquiao blasted him out in 2009. Hatton fought only once more after Pacquiao knocked him out in losing to Vyacheslav Senchenko three years later in an ill-advised comeback in 2012. Hatton took the fight with Senchenko without any tune-ups coming off of a 3-year layoff.
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