Pacquiao – “I’m Ready To Fight Him [Hatton]”

By Boxing News - 11/27/2008 - Comments

Image: Pacquiao - "I'm Ready To Fight Him [Hatton]"By Jason Kim: Light welterweight Ricky Hatton (45-1, 32 KOs) may not have long to wait for another big money fight no matter how things work out between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao on their December 6th fight. Initially it was De La Hoya who was the main one eager to fight Hatton next, but now Pacquiao has come out saying “I’m Ready To Fight Him [Hatton].”

For Hatton, 30, it probably doesn’t matter whom he ends up fighting, because he makes out well financially in fights against both. At the same time, Hatton would have his hands full against both of them, being much smaller than De La Hoya and a lot slower than Pacquiao. However, getting a huge payday will likely ease the sting of losing to one of them and will go a long way to making Hatton feel a lot better.

Hatton, 30, defeated Paulie Malignaggi by an 11th round stoppage on November 22nd, taking him out with a string of hard body shots in the round, causing Malignaggi’s trainer Buddy McGirt to step in and stop the fight.

Pacquiao figures to be a long shot for an eventual fight with Hatton, however, because most people consider De La Hoya to have too much size and power for the smaller Pacquiao to deal with, even though De La Hoya is considered well past his prime and no longer relevant in the welterweight or light middleweight division.

If Pacquiao does emerge as the winner in the fight, then it will give Hatton a much better chance at winning than a fight with the taller De La Hoya, because Hatton, 5’7”, would have a much easier time landing his big shots against the smaller Pacquiao than he would against De La Hoya, who typically uses his jab and likes to fight from the outside.

De La Hoya, an old 35, has handpicked Pacquiao, a super featherweight, for his December 6th bout, which was previously supposed to be De La Hoya’s final fight of his career. However, since the fight was signed, De La Hoya has had a changed of opinion, now wanting to fight beyond the Pacquiao fight, presumably against strictly smaller fighters like Hatton.

This has caused no shortage of criticism to be leveled at De La Hoya from all sides, for he previously said that he wanted to fight the winner of Antonio Margarito vs. Miguel Cotto, yet when the lanky 5’11” Margarito came out the winner in a savage 11th round stoppage of Cotto in July, De La Hoya seemed to get cold feet, changing his mind and saying that Margarito still needed to prove himself against Paul Williams, who Margarito had lost to a year earlier by a 12-round unanimous decision in July 2007.

Instead of moving forward, aiming his sights on another fighter his own size, the light middleweight De La Hoya instead looked first at a fight with Hatton, but he turned him down, because he already had a scheduled bout with Paulie Malignaggi setup for November and this didn’t allow Hatton enough time to prepare for a December fight a month later against De La Hoya. It was after this that De La Hoya turned his attention to the smallish, 5’6” super featherweight Pacquiao.