By Nate Anderson: It’s no mystery what former light welterweight and welterweight champion Ricky Hatton (45-1, 32 KOs) will need to do in order to beat Manny Pacquiao (48-3-2, 36 KOs) on May 2nd at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hatton, 30, fights best when he’s able to come inside and make a fierce body attack, throwing to the body and attacking the head with big uppercuts. When he’s able to stay there for prolonged periods of time without being separated by the referee, he’s very hard to beat.
That’s the question for Hatton, because depending on who the referee is, he may or may not be able to get away with his hard inside attack. Against fighters during most of the early portion of his career, Hatton was able to get away with attacking the body hard and staying on the inside, using his superior grabbing and holding technique to perfection.
But he’s had problems in the past two years when fighting in the U.S., where the referees have been much less tolerant of his punch and grab technique. One referee in particular, Joe Cortez, was having none of Hatton’s typical wrestling on the inside against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight in December 2007, pulling Hatton off of Mayweather repeatedly during the fight and warning him about his holding.
As it turned out, Hatton was essentially defanged by this practice and rendered almost useless. It was no wonder that he was eventually taken out by Mayweather in the 10th round. Without being able to fight on the inside, Hatton is really a much less effective fighter on the outside. Without the height or reach, he’s forced to lunge in with telegraphed punches to land his shots.
Mayweather was skillful enough to catch him while coming in, and so was Juan Lazcano. Most of his other opponents didn’t have the skills to take advantage of this, and didn’t have many chances anyway, because Hatton was on then constantly, lodged like an Alabama tick.
Most likely, Hatton will be able to get away with a significant amount of holding and wrestling against Pacquiao, because few referees are going to want to risk taking the fallout of being the one that factored in another Hatton loss.
If that turns out to be the case, then Hatton needs to stay right in close with Pacquiao, not letting him get any space so he can use his fast hands. At close range, Pacquiao is an average fighter and is unable to load up on his shots or get the speed needed to dominate Hatton. Pacquiao isn’t a particularly good body puncher nor is he skilled at the inside with uppercuts.
This is good news for Hatton, because if he can stay as close as possible to Pacquiao, he may be able to wear him out with wrestling and holding, and eventually tire him enough to take him out late like Hatton did with Kostya Tszyu.
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