By Jason Kim: The May 2nd bout between Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao looks like it’s set to go ahead after Manny agreed to the 52-48 purse split and signed & faxed the contract to Top Rank. The fight had previously been held back after Pacquiao was unhappy with the purse split and wanted a 60-40 split rather than 50-50. 52-48 was soon offered by Hatton’s team, but Pacquiao, still not satisfied, held out for a bigger slice of the pie.
Hatton soon lost patience and gave a Wednesday deadline for Pacquiao to send in a signed contract, which Manny promptly ignored. Hatton then withdrew from the fight negotiations and was in the process of looking for other fights when Pacquiao changed his mind and decided to take the 52-48 offer, with $12 million guaranteed.
Hatton had been looking into fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Oscar De La Hoya when the Pacquiao fight was no longer on the shelf. All very fine opponents, but with the Pacquiao fight giving Hatton a payday of more than $10 million, Ricky will take the money and choose that option rather than grumble about having to take the smaller share of the purse split.
However, like his fight with Mayweather, Hatton might in the end take another beating for a big payday. If Hatton has a flaw in his ability, it’s his tendency to absorb a lot of punishment. That problem persists despite changing trainers not too long ago.
Hatton is what he is. Brought up for much of his career as a slugger, Hatton remains essentially unchanged in this style regardless of who trains him. With neither the speed or foot movement of Pacquiao, Hatton may very well take a pounding even worse than his knockout loss to Mayweather in 2007. Taking a beating isn’t fun, but at least his many millions earned from this fight will assist in easing Hatton’s hurt feelings.
Pacquiao stands to gain a lot from this fight and it’s good that he saw reason and decided to sign the contract for the 52-48 split, because in doing so, if he wins, Pacquiao would make himself and even bigger star in the sport and set himself up for fights against Mayweather and possibly Antonio Margarito.
Either of those fights would be very tough for Pacquiao and perhaps a step too far for him, but like Hatton, Pacquiao’s hurt feelings of being beaten – and likely knocked out by both of them – would be eased by the many millions he would earn from them.
At the same time, he would have a built in excuse for losing, complaining that he was too small to compete with them. The fear of losing won’t stop him from fighting them, but one would hope that it’s not a situation where there are excuses made afterwards.
If Hatton loses to Pacquiao, his career takes a hard hit because this would be Ricky’s second loss against quality opposition, and he’d likely be faced with having to go back to the light welterweight division and fight the best fighters at that weight class and unfortunately, none of them are nearly as popular as Pacquiao or Mayweather.
Comments are closed.