Ricky Hatton’s Rise And Fall: His Fans Fault

By Boxing News - 08/20/2009 - Comments

hat4228By Tom Stokes: As a fighter Ricky Hatton has been criticised for being named in the same sentence as fighter such as Pacquiao and Mayweather, he’s been called “overrated” plenty of times, but it’s not really his fault, part of Hatton’s career success has also been his undoing as well, I’m talking about his fans, in my opinion if Hatton was fighting in alleyway outside his favourite boozer, his hoard of adoring fans would line up to pay good money for it.

Hatton has one of the biggest fan followings in boxing and rightly so, he’s a charismatic, exciting, entertaining boxer and most of all humble which is what makes him such an attraction to his fans, as result he’s become the people champion and a boxing cash cow, Floyd Mayweather calls himself Mr. PPV that title rightly belongs to Hatton.

Since he retired Kostya Tszyu (31-2, 25 KO’s) in 2005, Hatton’s stock went through the roof, allowing him to get fights in Vegas, something he probably would not have been able to do if he did not have such huge popularity, and this caught other fighters attention who wanted to fight Hatton such as Junior Witter (37-3, 22 KO’s), who knew a fight with Hatton would guarantee a payday.

One fighter who took advantage of this opportunity was Floyd Mayweather (39-0, 25 KO’s), Mayweather could have gone after someone like Mosley, Cotto or Margarito, but he chose Hatton because he would deliver a payday, courtesy of his fans base (probably the only thing the three above would struggle to match Hatton with).

This then lulled Hatton’s fans into thinking that Hatton was on the same skill level of Mayweather, when in fact the fight was made because Hatton’s fan base was going to provide Mayweather with a juicy payday. And unfortunately although Hatton show heart he was knocked out by Mayweather, but his fan’s where still by his side, ready and waiting to shell out cash for whenever Hatton was to fight again.

At the end of the day Hatton is a good fighter, but he’s not on the skill level as Mayweather or Pacquiao, but don’t get me wrong that doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve his shot against both of them, but realistically if Hatton didn’t have such a strong fan base that can provide Hatton’s opponent with a nice financial incentive to get in the ring with him, I doubt he would be fighting the top P4P fighters around.

So as much as his fan’s contributed to his success, Hatton’s reputation grew beyond his skill level as a fighter faster than he probably should have, due to hype is fans gave him, which has now left him in limbo following his devastating knockout loss to Pacquiao, but whatever Hatton’s future holds there’s no doubt his fan’s will be there, lining up to provide the sell out arena for his next fight, even if he doesn’t have the boxing ability to match his next opponent.



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