By Chris Williams: I’ve gone over this fight every which way that I can, but in the end all I can see is Ricky Hatton (45-1, 32 KOs) getting knocked out by Manny Pacquiao (48-3-2, 36 KOs) on May 2nd at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I think that Hatton, 30, isn’t in the same class as Pacquiao and will end up taking a ferocious beating from the Filipino star when they meet up. I think all the years of ballooning up in weight is going to catch up to Hatton when he steps foot in the ring on two weeks from now against Pacquiao.
Hatton looks a lot older than he was just two years ago, and it’s scary to see how much Ricky has aged in only two years. That’s not a good thing, because Pacquiao is the kind of opponent that Hatton would need to be in his prime to beat. However, judging by how Hatton has looked in his last three fights to Floyd Mayweather Jr., Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi, he’s slipping as a fighter.
Floyd Mayweather Sr. may have been helpful to Hatton if he had selected him as his trainer 10 years ago, but not now. Hatton’s kidding himself if he thinks that Mayweather will help him against Pacquiao. If anything, I see Mayweather as retarding Hatton’s growth and actually making him a worse fighter. You can’t take a pressure fighter and turn them into a boxer. That’s a waste of time and plain dumb.
It reminds me of the desperation that Oscar De La Hoya was showing as he was getting ready to fight Pacquiao, hiring Muhammad Ali’s old trainer, taking on weird diets and looking for answers in the wrong places. If Hatton wants to have any chance in this fight – and he probably only has a slight chance in the best of circumstances – then he needs to try and mug Pacquiao on the inside and turn it into a wrestling, fouling type war.
The problem here is that Hatton will probably waste time by trying to box with the much faster and superior Pacquiao and end up finding himself hopelessly behind in the scoring by the time Hatton realizes that he needs to try and revert to his old style of fighting.
Hatton will be much too slow for Pacquiao and carved up like a turkey as he struggles with his new style. It’s actually going to be kind of funny, because it’s so utterly dumb of him to even think that he can outbox Pacquiao. The beating that Mayweather Jr. gave Hatton will pale besides the one that Pacquiao is going to give him on May 2nd, believe me. Hatton has really nothing going for him in this fight at all that I can think of.
He’s the same age as Pacquiao, but physically, Hatton looks at least four to five years older than Pacquiao, perhaps due to Hatton’s hard living. The speed won’t be there for him, neither will the power or movement. The only thing I can think that Hatton will do better is wrestle, but he won’t get many chances to do that because Pacquiao will keep drilling him all night long with power shots.
In the end, I see this fight as lasting no longer than the 8th round with Hatton flat on his back on the canvas covered with blood and shaking his head from side to side in disappointment.
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