By Chris Williams: In weighing the pluses and minuses of each fighter, I can’t find too many areas where Ricky Hatton matches up well with Manny Pacquiao. However remote Hatton’s chances are to win, I can’t see him coming up with a lottery winning performance in this fight. He’s too simple, crude, one-dimensional and terribly limited to beat a fighter with the speed and power of Pacquiao. The fight won’t be a pretty picture by the end.
In one corner you have a fighter with incredible speed and excellent foot work and in the other, you have a fighter known more for his bum rushing and wrestling style of fighting more than his actual skills in the ring. When is all said and done, Hatton will likely be left a bloody mess by Pacquiao, face down on the canvas like David Diaz was in his fight with Pacquiao in a 9th round stoppage in June 2008.
Only a handful of fighters can give Pacquiao any kind of problems, one of them being Juan Manuel Marquez, but Hatton isn’t nearly as skilled as Marquez in my estimation and not the kind of fighter that will give Pacquiao many problems. Between the all the punches he’s going to be eating from Pacquiao on May 2nd at the MGMN Grand in Las Vegas, I can’t see him doing much landing of his own.
Pacquiao tends to dish out so much punishment that when a limited fighter like Hatton finally gets a chance to throw some punches, he probably won’t have much power to do anything. I think this is a good fight for Hatton to potentially shot his stuff to worldwide audiences, given that he’s been mostly sheltered for the vast majority of his career in England.
But from top to bottom, Hatton has fought very few talented fighters aside from Floyd Mayweather Jr. that you could point to as someone that would prepare Hatton for a fighter as tough and as skilled as Pacquiao. Experience, or lack thereof for Hatton, will be a problem for him. Beating faded fighters, a whole lot of them in his career, Hatton has somehow skipped over taking on some of the fighters that he should have fought by this point in his career. That’s not good.
At the same time, Hatton has entered into this fight with thoughts of the future, making comments about wanting to take a rematch with Mayweather down the road. That seems as if Hatton is looking beyond this fight, as if he’s too confident about his chances in this fight.
That’s not a smart thing. More likely, Hatton will be facing some serious career decisions about whether he should retire or carry on with his career if he ends up taking a beating as bad as I think he will. Frankly, I wouldn’t pay a dime to see him fight if he gets trounced by Pacquiao. Oh, I’m certain Hatton will move forward into fights with Oscar De La Hoya or some other top fighter, but it won’t be something I feel that he deserves given his probable loss to Pacquaio.
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