By Chris Williams: If you look at the mess of that Ricky Hatton has made of his once promising career on the past two years, with his two losses to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, it becomes clear that Hatton’s primitive caveman style of fighting has to go immediately if he wants to make a comeback. Since Hatton failed rather miserably in his attempts to learn under the tutelage of great trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr., it looks as if it’s going to take someone a little more strict and confrontational than Mayweather Sr., to unlearn Hatton of his primitive style of fighting.
I say Hatton needs to go right back to the beginning of his career and choose someone like Teddy Atlas who won’t take no crap from Hatton and will kick his butt and force him to learn how to fight properly. Atlas or someone like him is needed to get Hatton back on track, and clear out the gym of his extra trainers and what not that aren’t really helping him.
Hatton needs a strong trainer who won’t try to be his friend and won’t be afraid of being fired if Hatton doesn’t like how things are going. Hatton can’t be the one dictating how things are going to go, because the dude’s career is on life support at this point and ready to go flat line in a minute unless he gets back in the ring and stops with his vacations and what not.
Hatton needs to get serious and put total focus on actually learning the new style instead of just aping it like last time when he showed things in training but then went out and fought like he always does. Hatton can’t be quality fighters by mugging them like he did in the past, because he got away with that kind of mauling type of fighting because of the mediocre quality of his opponents.
If Hatton had been forced to fight Pacquiao or Mayweather years ago, it would have been like a cold slap in the face and it would have taught him a big lesson. Unfortunately, Hatton grew lazy by being able to fight in his 1950s style of fighting against marginal opposition until he was thrown in with two class A fighters in Pacquiao and Mayweather.
Hatton should have gotten a clue to first time he lost and understood that things weren’t as he believed them to be about his ability. Hatton needs to go way back and do some kind of basic stuff to learn how to use his jab, keep guard up and stay on the outside. We’re talking elementary stuff here that most boxers learn at the start of their career.
But somehow, Hatton seemed to miss out on this training because he’s often used his face to block punches rather than his gloves. That can’t happen anymore because Hatton appears to have a glass jaw now on the same lines as Amir Khan.
Unless Hatton changes his style completely by his next fight, I predict now that he will be knocked out almost as bad as Pacquiao put him out. Pacquiao isn’t a huge puncher by any stretch of the imagination, yet he was able to knock Hatton into the next century with a few shots. That’s a wake up call for Hatton. He needs to make some changes or else his next fight will probably be his last.
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