Hatton to Be Trained By Roach?

By Boxing News - 05/10/2009 - Comments

hat2435By William Mackay: According to the latest boxing news rumors, Ricky Hatton may possibly be looking at changing head trainers, adding the great Freddie Roach as his new head trainer. If so, it looks as if Floyd Mayweather Sr., who trained Hatton for two bouts – Paulie Malignaggi and Manny Pacquiao –, may be on the way out of Hatton’s camp. Mayweather Sr. is said to have had problems with competing for training time with Hatton and wasn’t too happy about the arrangement.

Roach is the trainer for Pacquiao, Amir Khan and Craig McEwan, so Hatton couldn’t go wrong by selecting a trainer like Roach.

Of course, this is still at the rumor stage, but it would be quite interesting if Hatton and Roach do end up teaming together. Roach is known for helping flawed fighters like Hatton. God knows, Roach worked wonders on Pacquiao, who when he started training with Pacquiao, the Filipino star had a left hand and not much else in his offensive armament.

With Roach’s training, Pacquiao has developed an awesome right hook and has learned how to defend himself much better than he did before hooking up with Roach. It remains to be seen if Roach would want to train Hatton or not. Roach generally takes on fighters that he believes that can go somewhere in the sport, and that he feels that he can truly help with his training.

With Hatton, it’s unclear whether he’s going to continue fighting beyond one more fight in Manchester, England. Although Roach might be open to training Hatton for only one fight, it’s unclear how much improvement that can be made in Hatton’s game in only one training camp.

Hatton has developed a lot of bad habits in his pro career, such as coming at his opponents face first with his hands down. It would take a lot of work for even a great trainer like Roach to break Hatton of his bad technique. Goodness knows, Floyd Mayweather Sr., appeared to have no luck in teaching Hatton things that he could apply in a fight.

You could see Mayweather Sr. doing a lot of training and talking in the HBO Pacquiao-Hatton 24/7 series, but Hatton failed to follow through with using the teachings in his bout with Pacquiao. Beyond the problems of trying to teach Hatton, there’s also the question of Hatton’s assistant trainer Lee Beard.

He appeared to be doing a lot of the training for Hatton before his bout with Pacquiao, and was even giving advice in Hatton’s corner in between the 1st and 2nd rounds while Mayweather Sr. was trying to speak with Hatton.

This is something that could lead to a problem for Roach, who likes to be the main guy in his training with his fighters. It’s unclear whether Roach would be okay with Beard doing a significant amount of the training as well, since the two trainers might not see eye to eye on the right training philosophy for Hatton.

Hatton, 30, was destroyed by Pacquiao in a 2nd round knockout last Saturday night, a knockout which left Hatton out cold for three long minutes. When Hatton came to, he didn’t know which punch had knocked him out, because he hadn’t seen Pacquiao throwing the shot and was taken by surprise by the huge left hand punch.



Comments are closed.