By Jim Dower: With other more potentially tougher opponents out there to fight in the light welterweight division, former IBF champion Ricky Hatton (44-1, 31 KOs) took a blind eye to them recently, ignoring more worthy fighters like Timothy Bradley (perhaps the best light welterweight in the division at this point) and Andreas Kotelnik, to fight the soft-punching IBF champion Paulie Malignaggi on November 22nd at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hatton’s choice of Malignaggi seemed more of the status quo for him, who has been dodging Junior Witter, another top light welterweight, for years now and has instead fought older light welterweights past their prime like Kostya Tszyu and Vince Phillips rather than the Witter.

I suppose the choice of Malignaggi can be forgiven to a point, given the fact that Hatton was embarrassed by Floyd Mayweather Jr. and almost stopped in his last fight against Juan Lazcano. However, the choice of Malignaggi seems to have left most people cold, in particular because the way in which Malignaggi has won his last two fights against Herman Ngoudjo and Lovemore N’dou, both by controversial decisions. Indeed, Malignaggi arguably shouldn’t even be the one fighting Hatton, for it seemed that Ngoudjo did more than enough to get the decision in their fight in January 2008, a fight that Malignaggi won by a 12-round unanimous decision. In case you didn’t know, Malignaggi is considered to be the much more popular fighter with fans in the U.S., which made it understandable why he was ultimately given the nod in what should have been a close decision win for Ngoudjo.

Hatton, however, seems to have taken the easy path by selecting Malignaggi rather than someone like, say, Bradley, who would have a speed, stamina and youth advantage of the 29 year-old Hatton. At any rate, Hatton has made up his mind that he wants to take on Malignaggi, and there’s nothing more that can be done then to hope that he won’t continue the growing trend of selecting easier opponents in the future.

However, that’s probably what we’re looking at in the future, for as soon as Hatton gets rid of Malignaggi, most likely by a knockout, Hatton will probably be taking on Manny Pacquiao or even Oscar De La Hoya, even though Oscar has stated that his last fight will be against Pacquiao on December 6th. I don’t for a second believe that garbage, so I suspect we may be seeing Hatton taking on either of those two fighters next.

After all, once he has the title in hand, he’ll have a free fight to take on whoever he pleases. If not for them, look for Hatton to scrape the bottom of the IBF barrel and chose someone like number #9th ranked Gavin Rees or number #14th ranked Mike Arnoutis, two fighters that he would be sure to have an easy fight with. I don’t see him fighting Lamont Peterson, Randall Bailey, Ngoudjo, or Lovemore N’dou, because they’re tough fighters with a lot of power, and they might be able to dent Hatton’s already compromised chin.