By Scott Gilfoid: In looking back at Ricky Hatton’s best victory of his career, a 11th round TKO over boxing great Kostya Tszyu in 2005, I’ve come to the conclusion that Hatton should have been disqualified in the bout for numerous fouls that he committed in the fight. It was horrible to watch, because I hadn’t seen roughhouse tactics like that used in a professional boxing match before without the fighter being severely penalized or disqualified altogether.

For me, it was an eye opening experience and one of the first times I’d seen Hatton fight and I was stunned at all the fouls that Hatton was able to get away with in the fight, ranging from low blows, elbows, rabbit punches, pushing, head butts and an enormous amount of holding and wrestling.

It was as if there was no referee in the ring because Hatton wasn’t receiving any warnings nor was the referee Dave Parris (the same referee who was involved with the Martin Rogan vs. Sam Sexton fight last Friday night) separating Hatton from Tszyu, even though Hatton was doing little more than just mauling Tszyu for extended periods of time with wrestling, holding & hitting and just shoving Tszyu around with no real purpose other than to wear him out.

I’d seen heavyweight John Ruiz, a fighter known for his excessive clinching, fight numerous times before, but the stuff that Hatton was doing against Tszyu was several levels above Ruiz in dirty fighting. At 36, having had to take off a bunch of weight and then travel to fight in a huge hostile arena in England, I wasn’t surprised that Tszyu lost the bout.

After all, it was a style of fighting that Tszyu had never had to deal with in his career, because the vast majority of fighters that he fought weren’t the hugger types like Hatton. However, even with the things that Tszyu had to deal with on that night with Hatton, he fought him close for the 10 rounds before the fight was stopped in the 11th.

Starting in the 1st round, when Hatton landed a picture perfect rabbit punch without a warning or a point being taken away from him, I thought this isn’t a fight that Tszyu can win unless he gets in the gutter and resorts to the same kind of tactics.

I mean, it wasn’t really boxing that I was seeing that night. It was like some kind of merge of MMA and Boxing without any real supervision going on by a third person to ensure that both fighters were following the rules. It was basically Tszyu tossed into a pit without rules of any kind that applied on that night.

If that wasn’t bad enough, then you add 22,000 screaming fans that are shouting their fool heads of with everything that Hatton did in the ring, no matter what it was. The fight was real close until the later rounds when Tszyu accidently landed a low blow.

Hatton fired back one of the hardest low blows that I’ve ever seen in what appeared to be a tit for tat type move on his part, and hurt Tszyu badly with the punch and took the rest of the air out of his said. Naturally, Hatton didn’t receive any warnings from the referee for the low blow.

I have no idea why the referee let Hatton get away with so many fouls not to mention his constant mauling and wrestling which consumed huge portions of every round taking up a lot of time and not letting Tszyu throw punches.

You might as well have had both of them wrestling on the canvas, because it wasn’t a boxing match that night. It was more like a cage match that had no rules and one that Tszyu had no clue about to compete. If this had been a boxing match without clinching, fouling and wrestling, I have no doubts that Tszyu would have knocked Hatton out on that night.

It’s too bad that Tszyu never fought again, because had the fight been fought in Australia or the U.S., with a referee that was enforcing the rules, I think Hatton would have been forced to fight in a much different manner or else he would have been disqualified.