By Jim Dower: In weighing whether you could consider Ricky Hatton a shot fighter, you have to look at the two schools of thought on the subject. On one side you have the boxing fans who feel that Hatton has lost his ability to take a punch since being drilled by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a 10th round stoppage loss in December 2007.
And on the other side there are those who feel that Hatton was knocked out because he stepped up a rung too high when he took on Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, who were both clearly better than Hatton and took him out with hard shots. Either theory could be true or it could be a combination of them both.
What you can’t ignore is that Hatton was immediately hurt in his next fight after losing to Mayweather, in the fight against Juan Lazcano who stunned Hatton with a big left hook in the 8th round of their bout. To be fair, Hatton was nailed with a big left hook that he never saw coming since he was rushing forward at the time that Lazcano hit him.
However, Lazcano’s not a big puncher and Hatton had been hit by the same punch by other light welterweights with better power than Lazcano and Ricky hadn’t been hurt like that. Who knows? If could have been just a fluke thing that could have happened at any point in Hatton’s career if he had been hit on the button in the same way that Lazcano hit him.
But none the less, the timing of it coming directly after the Mayweather knockout makes it very suspicious. Hatton did get through his next fight after the Lazcano bout, beating Paulie Malingaggi in an 11th round TKO in November 2008, but that fight isn’t a good test of Hatton’s chin because Malingaggi isn’t a power puncher of any sort.
Pacquiao is a good puncher, but he’s not been a one-punch knockout artist in the past like he looked to be in the Hatton fight. You would think that because Pacquiao’s moving up in weight that his power would have less effect on a bigger fighter like Hatton, who should have been able to take Pacquiao’s punches without getting knocked down repeatedly.
However, Pacquiao was hurting Hatton with nearly every punch that he threw at him in the short two round bout. Pacquiao is a great fighter, most boxing fans would agree, but he hadn’t been able to dominate fighters like Juan Manuel Marquez like he was with Hatton.
From the looks of it, Hatton looked like a shell shocked fighter who could no longer take a heavy shot without dropping to the canvas. No doubt that Pacquiao is better than most of Hatton’s opponents during his career, but I don’t think that Pacquiao is better than Kostya Tszyu, and he hadn’t been able to hurt Hatton like this four years ago in their fight. Hatton took all Tszyu’s shots without getting hurt once in the fight.
Of course, back then Hatton had far less mileage on him from his bouts with overeating and drinking between fights. You can take one look at photos of Hatton from four years ago and then take a look at recent photos of Ricky to see how much he’s aged in only four years. It’s dramatic to say the least.
Does this mean that a combination of Hatton’s unhealthy lifestyle and the punishment that he took in fights with Mayweather and Pacquiao have had an accumulative effect on Ricky, I can’t say for sure.
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