By Dave Lar: In a bit of bad news for Ricky Hatton, IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi reportedly vacated the title rather than agreeing to face his number one mandatory challenger Herman Ngoudjo. Apparently, Ngoudjo was willing to wait until Malignaggi fought Hatton in November, but wanted to be guaranteed a fight against the winner. However, it appears that no guarantees were given to him, which forced Malignaggi to give up the belt. The belt will now be fought over between Juan Urango (20-1-1, 16 KOs) and Ngoudjo.

The news, although not probably not as crucial for Malignaggi because he looked to be a long shot to defeat Hatton, it’s a especially bad news for Hatton because he had hopes of regaining the title. This was one of his main reasons for choosing to fight Malignaggi. Now, it looks as if that unless Hatton is willing to wait the outcome of Urango-Ngoudjo and fight the winner, he will have to seek out one of the other light welterweight champions like WBO title holder Kendall Holt, WBA champion Andrea Kotelnik or Timothy Bradley, the WBC champion. With Hatton interested in possible future bouts against Manny Pacquiao or Oscar De La Hoya, it seems doubtful that he will go after one of the aforementioned title holders.

With big money bouts against either De La Hoya and Pacquiao looming, it just doesn’t seem worth it to fight one of the current light welterweight champions other than Malignaggi, who’s easily the most popular of the current title holders. However, once Hatton decides on taking on one of the light welterweight champions, he’ll likely get his pick of the litter of who he wants to fight. Unlike other fighters in the division, he won’t have to fight his way into a bout because of his huge name and popularity among boxing fans. Don’t expect him to face Bradley or Holt, though, because both of them are lightning fast and would be problems for him.

Hatton, 29, will be going into his bout with Malignaggi with a new trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr., who Hatton recently hired to replace his departing long-time trainer Billy Graham. Mayweather Sr. is working on changing Hatton’s brawling style of fight by trying to teach him more defensive skills in order to prevent him from taking so much punishment in his bouts. Up until a few years ago, Hatton didn’t need to focus on any defensive help, because he would often overwhelm his hapless opponents with his all out style of fighting.

However, due to his increasing age and the fact that he’s now fighting much better fighters than he did earlier in his career, he’s taking many more hits than he did before. He was stopped in December 2007 by Floyd Mayweather Jr., who took advantage of Hatton’s aggressive attacks, hitting him with a short left hook that sent him down in the 10th round. He would quickly finish Hatton off after that. Hatton appeared to learn nothing from the fight, as he made the same mistake in his last fight against journeyman Juan Lazcano, who twice hurt Hatton with big left hooks to the head.

It will be interesting to see if Hatton is still young enough to learn new boxing skills, because his brawling style is pretty well ingrained at this point in his career and it’s difficult to imagine him trying to turn into a boxer/slugger. It may actually hurt him, because if he chooses to try and box with Malignaggi, a fighter with tremendous boxing ability, Hatton may end up losing by a decision.