By Jim Dower: Former champion Ricky Hatton (43-1, 31 KOs) may be biting off more than he can chew this Saturday in his comeback bout against Juan Lazcano (37-4, 27 KOs), whom he fights in Manchester in front of a large crowd of fans, hoping to see Hatton get back on the winning track. However, in choosing a fighter as good as Lazcano, 32, Hatton may have made a major mistake of the first order. Lazcano isn’t a second tier or a journeyman, which is the typical type of opponent that fighters select after having lost by knockout in their previous fights. Lazcano, though not ranked in the top 10, is a world class fighter and much better than most people are aware of.
Indeed, in his last fight against Vivian Harris, in a WBC light welterweight title eliminator in February 2007, Lazcano lost by a narrow 12-round decision against a fighter with superb skills. Lazcano fought competitively throughout, showing good power, a tough chin and an excellent work rate throughout the fight. It was only near the end of the fight that Harris pulled away a little, winning the last three rounds, that the fight was decided. If Hatton wanted to get an easy opponent, one that he can win without the least amount of trouble, Lazcano is the wrong opponent for him. But something that Hatton and his management seem to have forgotten, it seems, is that Hatton is coming off a bad knockout loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in December of last year.
That’s only give months time since the loss, which isn’t nearly enough time to go by after having experienced as bad a knockout as Hatton did in that fight. Normally, when a fighter suffers a particularly bad knockout, they need at least six months or more to recover from the damage done to their brain. That doesn’t mean that they can’t fight before that, only that they need to take it easy, selecting their opponents carefully to avoid another hard-punching opponent that might be able to cause even more damage. In Lazcano’s case, he’s not a big puncher by any stretch of the imagination, which is probably why he was selected by Hatton’s team as a good opponent for him.
What they seem to have forgotten about Lazcano, though, is how tough he is. He may not hit hard – that’s a given – but if he can make it a particularly tough fight, landing a high number of head shots against Hatton, he may have a good chance of knocking him out. As we just saw with former heavyweight champion Chris Byrd in his recent knockout loss to Shaun George last week, bad things happen when a fighter comes back too soon after being knocked out.
In Byrd’s case, he was stopped by Alexander Povetkin, and was promptly knocked down in the first round by a right hand from the light heavyweight George. This may turn out to be the case with Hatton. He looks good physically, having lost much of the weight that he gained following his loss to Mayweather, yet it’s his brain that worries me. By coming back so soon after his loss, his ability to take a punch may have diminished, making his susceptible for some of the shots that Lazcano will no doubt be raining on him. This isn’t going to be an easy fight, even before Hatton’s loss to Mayweather, because Lazcano has a sturdy chin.
This means that Hatton will be getting hit a lot, whether he knows it or not, and if he hasn’t recovered from his KO loss, we’ll soon see. I personally think he’s making a tremendous blunder by taking on a fighter in the class of Lazcano, and no matter how many screaming fans that on Hatton’s site, it won’t save him from the big shots he’s going to have to take in the fight. No amount of sparring can prepare a fighter like Hatton for what he’s going to meet in his bout with Lazcano, because sparring never mimics the type of tough fighting that occurs in a bout.
For Hatton, I don’t think his head has healed enough to fight a world class fighter like Lazcano, and I expect that we’ll witness another shocking loss by Hatton.