By Chris Williams: In looking at Ricky Hatton’s disastrous attempt at beating Manny Pacquiao resulting in Hatton getting dumped three times on the canvas and completely knocked out, it leaves one wondering whether Hatton still has what it takes to beat the top light welterweights in the division.

Not that Hatton really cares at this point, because he seems to have been on the Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya career approach for the past few years, an approach which has the fighters skipping around various different weight divisions, picking out the best fighter in that division regardless of their weight and fighting them.

Since Hatton probably isn’t interested in taking on the top level fighters in the light welterweight division, let’s just suppose for the sake of this article that Hatton was interested in fighting the best fighters in the light welterweight division.

How would Hatton do against the top fighters in the division and would he still be relevant if he were actually fighting the best instead of skipping around looking for big money fights. We don’t have much to go by since Hatton has been scarce in the light welterweight division the past few years.

We do have Hatton’s fights against Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi last year to go by, although neither are what I consider to be top tier fighters despite Malignaggi being ranked there by the governing bodies. I personally have Malignaggi in the 2nd tier, so he doesn’t count as being a top level fighter for Hatton.

Right now, it’s questionable whether Hatton can even take a heavy shot with dropping for the ten count regardless of who the opponent is. You could say that Hatton can still compete against a certain fighter, but after a knockout like the one that Hatton experienced against Pacquiao in which Hatton was out for three long minutes, it’s unknown how he’ll react in the future when he gets tagged again.

And Hatton will be getting hit again, you can bet on that happening. Hatton will continue to have his regular old leaky defense no matter what great trainer is coaching Hatton. Let’s say we put Hatton in with Kendall Holt and Timothy Bradley, probably the two best light welterweights in the division for the past year or more.

Hatton might be able to do okay for awhile using his crowding, wrestling inside fighting style. But I have a feeling that each of them would be marking the time waiting for the opportunity to blast Hatton as soon as he attempts to throw one of his badly telegraphed left hooks.

He’s pretty predictable with that punch and easily countered by quality fighters. As Lazcano showed, even less than top tier fighters are able to take advantage of Hatton when he tries to throw that punch. I think both Bradley and Holt would get to Hatton once he slipped up and tried to throw the left hook.

The other top light welterweights – Junior Witter, Victor Ortiz, Andriy Kotelnik, and Ricardo Torres – are a mixed bag. Hatton might be able to beat them if he can take their shots, but I’m not so sure he can at this point. Torres would be especially dangerous due to his better power.

He hits harder than Pacquiao and if he connected Hatton would be in dream land for the night. But the same goes for Torres. If Hatton connects with something big, he would have a good chance of putting Torres down for the count.

Witter would fight on the outside and foil Hatton all night long, beating him without getting hit all that often. Kotelnik fights similar to Witter, using his jab a lot to punch from the outside.