By William Mackay: With Ricky Hatton’s disastrous performance against Manny Pacquiao last weekend, there have been rumblings about Hatton having problems with his trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. before the bout. Could Mayweather Sr. be the one to blame for Hatton’s bad performance against Pacquiao? After all, Mayweather Sr. did train Hatton and often time’s trainers are given the blame for the loss and credit for the wins.

Look at Freddie Roach, the trainer for Pacquiao; he’s basking in the glory for devising a strategy to beat Hatton. However, the likely bigger truth is that Pacquiao could have beaten Hatton without Roach, because Hatton made it easy for Pacquiao by using very little finesse in his attacks.

I don’t remember seeing Mayweather Sr. teaching the kind of strategy that Hatton used in his fight with Pacquiao, so I’m dismissing those who feel that Mayweather Sr. should be the one to take the brunt of the responsibility for Hatton’s loss.

Sure, Hatton and Mayweather may have had some problems in their training camp together, but that shouldn’t have been enough of a factor for Hatton to lose so badly to Pacquiao. Hatton didn’t seem to use much of any of Mayweather Sr’s teachings as far as I can tell.

It looked like Hatton was using the same style that he had his entire career under trainer Billy Graham. Why Hatton suddenly chose to ignore what he had been shown by Mayweather Sr. is a question I’m sure that a lot of boxing fans would like to know.

Was it that Hatton felt that he knew better than Mayweather Sr. and hence was going to try to do it his way by rushing Pacquiao? Or it could have been that Hatton was knocked senseless from some of the many right hands he was getting nailed with in the 1st round against Pacquiao.

Certainly, if Hatton was hit hard enough it could have knocked the sense out of him and made him revert temporarily back to his old style. However, I tend to discount that theory because Hatton was rushing Pacquiao from the opening seconds of the bout, keeping his hands low and rushing trying to grab and land left hooks.

That wasn’t what Mayweather Sr. wanted Hatton to do, so I find it hard to assign blame to Mayweather Sr. for Hatton’s primitive attacks against Pacquiao.

Taking Mayweather Sr. out of the equation, would Hatton have done better against Pacquiao if Hatton was trained by his old trainer Billy Graham? I think we got the answer to that question in watching Hatton get blasted out in the 2nd round by Pacquiao. I guess we can’t know for sure, but we do know that Hatton’s offensive attacks were ineffective against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and they were further exposed in Hatton’s win over Juan Lazcano.

This would seem to suggest that Hatton needed a different style to use, one more pro oriented and less like s club fighter. This is why Mayweather Sr. was so important for Hatton. He may have had differences with Mayweather Sr. during training camp, but this shouldn’t the reason for Hatton’s poor performance against Pacquiao, because I couldn’t see any of Mayweather’s teachings in use against Pacquiao. For that reason, it seems that Hatton might as well not been trained at all by Mayweather Sr., since Hatton didn’t use anything that was taught to him by Mayweather.