By Manuel Perez: I think the Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton mega fight won’t end up bringing in nearly as much PPV buys as some people might think it’s going to. The bout, which takes place on May 2nd, is lacking one important ingredient: a big American star. In the past, the biggest PPV fights involved Floyd Mayweather against Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, and De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao.
In this case, we only have two foreign fighters, neither of which has fought that many fights in the U.S. The fights that we have seen of both of them have been hardly impressive. Pacquiao looked terrible against the talented Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez last year, and Pacquiao got one of the biggest gifts of his life when he was given the decision over Marquez.
A lot of Americans didn’t like how that fight turned out, and were expecting that Pacquiao would give Marquez a rematch to clear things up. Pacquaio didn’t and moved on to other opponents. If Pacquiao isn’t good enough to beat Marquez, then why should boxing fans pay their hard earned money to see him fight Ricky Hatton? The one that should be fighting Hatton is Marquez, not Pacquiao.
Manny goes after De La Hoya, beats him and suddenly he’s supposed to be a big star now. I don’t think so. Pacquiao didn’t impress in that fight and the victory is an empty one due to De La Hoya’s poor conditioning at the time of the fight. All Pacquiao showed was that he can beat an old, food-starved, part time boxer. That isn’t a victory. It was like putting a sick pet out of its misery.
Hatton isn’t immune to all this either. His career has been a case of him being carefully matched against beatable fighters. He beats Kostya Tszyu at the end of his career, and his fans seem to think that this suggests that Hatton is the king top. To hear Hatton’s fans tell it, they think that Tszyu was still fighting at his best by the time Hatton met up with him in 2005.
Tszyu was 36 at the time, and believe me, he was far from his prime. In his best years, Tszyu would have made beaten Hatton even worse than Mayweather did. It would have been easy. So there isn’t much substance in Hatton’s record, and this is something that many Americans hate about him.
He finally steps it up in 2007 and gets spanked by Mayweather in a 10th round TKO loss. I figured that would be the end of Hatton taking tough bouts, and I was pretty much right, because he’s taken it easy since then, getting victories over Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi. Those are interesting opponents, but not the kind of fighters that Hatton should have been facing.
Boxing fans will want to see some stars without the kind of baggage that both Hatton and Pacquiao bring to the ring with them on May 2nd, and because of this, I expect fans to stay away from purchasing the fight. They’ll watch, at least some of them, when it comes on regular HBO in a week or two.
It isn’t like they’re missing anything, because Hatton – the bigger, stronger and more talented fighter – will easily win. Like I said, if Pacquiao can’t beat Marquez, how can he beat someone like Hatton who is even bigger?
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