By Eric Thomas: Having had back to back poor performances, it’s hard to tell what version of Ricky Hatton (44-1, 31 KOs) will enter the ring on Saturday night against Paulie Malignaggi (25-1, 5 KOs) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. If this fight were to have occurred several years ago when Hatton was at the top of his game, it would be an almost guaranteed win for him over Malignaggi.
That’s not the case anymore after losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. by a 10th round stoppage in December 10th, and then come close to being stopped in the 8th round in his last fight against Juan Lazcano in May. In that fight, in some ways similar to both the Mayweather and David Haye vs. Monte Barrett fight, Hatton got tagged with a big left hook in the 8th, hurting him badly.
When Lazcano went after him, the referee pulled Lazcano off of Hatton, giving him time to recover and then stopping action when Hatton pointed to his shoelace, giving Hatton even more time to recover.
It’s probably unlikely that the light-hitting Malignaggi will be able to hurt Hatton in the same way that the powerful Lazcano could, but there’s a possibility, especially if Hatton gets wild and tries to throw leaping left hooks like he’s often done in the past against good opponents.
With his new trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr., hopefully Hatton has weaned himself from his reckless style of fighting, because Malignaggi has the boxing skills to make him look really bad if Hatton tries to bull him around the ring like he did against an old version of Kostya Tszyu back in 2005.
Hatton has said that if he loses to Malignaggi, he would retire from the sport rather than continuing any further. With only two more fights on the horizons for Hatton, potential bouts against Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao, Hatton stands to lose a tremendous amount of money should he retire after Saturday night.
Although there won’t likely be titles on the line against De La Hoya and Pacquiao, the bouts will make a ton of money due to the popularity of the fighters involved. Win or lose, these are probably the going to be the last two fights of Hatton’s career as he’s stated that he wants to hang up his gloves after these two bouts.
There’s still other fighters out there for him to fight in both the light welterweight and welterweight division but most of them, except for Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto, don’t have a big enough name probably to lure Hatton into sticking around the sport and fighting them.
However, Hatton may not get a chance at Pacquiao or De La Hoya if he slips up against Malignaggi. This is going to be a very tough fight for Hatton, if only because he’s no longer able to fight hard for three minutes of every round and his defensive lapses have been exposed as he’s moved up in competition in the past year.
Comments are closed.