By Chris Williams: All I can say is ‘you blew it, Hatton.’ With Oscar De La Hoya effectively calling it quits on his boxing career, any chances that Ricky Hatton had to fight him went straight out the window with Oscar’s retirement. What’s so funny and yet so sad at the same time is that Hatton had a chance to fight De La Hoya, but passed it up for the chance to fight Paulie Malignaggi of all people.
Boy, I bet Hatton had that one back to do over because he turned his back on making over $10 million to fight De La Hoya and ended up with much less to fight Malignaggi.
And the thing of it is, almost no one even cares about Hatton’s win over Malignaggni because he isn’t considered to be in the class of top light welterweights Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Victor Ortiz or Junior Witter. In other words – they’re the fighters that Hatton should have been fighting a long time ago rather than Juan Lazcano, Malignaggi, or Jose Luis Castillo.
I have no idea why Hatton chose to turn down a fight with De La Hoya, but it’s got to be one of the worst decisions he’s made in his career. Obviously, Manny Pacquiao is happy Ricky did so, because Manny then stepped up to the plate and took the fight, making millions of dollars that would have gone to Hatton and then got all the credit for pretty much beating De La Hoya into retirement.
But then again, Pacquiao is a very talented fighter, and I’m not so certain that Hatton has anywhere near the skills needed to do the same thing to De La Hoya that Pacquiao did. I do know that Hatton would have loved to have gotten the payday, because getting paid for the Malignaggi fight much have seemed like chump change compared to what he would have made if Hatton had fought De La Hoya.
It’s weird how some fighters make decisions sometime. I can’t for the life of me understand them, because it seems like a no-brainer to me. If I were even signed for a fight with Malignaggi, I’d tear up the contract and take the De La Hoya fight instead.
Now, Hatton will never fight Oscar and he’ll have to be content fight fighting Pacquiao, a fighter nowhere near as popular as De La Hoya. Pacquiao may be more talented than Oscar, but that has nothing to do with popularity with boxing fans, which is why Hatton should have dove at the chance for a bout with De La Hoya.
Who knows? Maybe Hatton thought that De La Hoya would be around forever, and that he could get a shot at him in a year or two. I knew as soon as De La Hoya signed the fight for Pacquiao he was signing up to get his backside kicked.
And I also figured that De La Hoya wouldn’t be able to stand the shame of losing to such a small fighter like Pacquiao and would retire immediately. That’s why De La Hoya shouldn’t have fought Pacquiao to begin with. With Hatton, you can kind of give De La Hoya a free pass because he’s only one division below where De La Hoya fought much of his career.
At any rate, it’s sad that Hatton won’t get a chance to try to put a whipping on De La Hoya like the one that Pacquiao gave him, and even worse that Ricky won’t get the huge payday that he could have received. It’s funny how things go sometime, isn’t it?
Now, Hatton is about to fight Pacquiao on May 2nd, and is facing almost the exact same scenario that De La Hoya faced recently, except there’s not nearly as much of a size difference between him and Pacquiao.
I think the loss, which I expect to be a real beat down, will hurt Hatton much in the same way it did Oscar. Hatton, though, probably won’t retire from boxing, but it sure won’t help line up big money fights against Juan Manuel Marquez and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Something about getting totally beaten up has a way of repelling potential opponents.
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