Was Hatton an Accidental Champion?

By Scott Gilfoid: When I look at Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KOs) career I wonder how he was able to ever hold down a title with his limited boxing skills. As someone mentioned earlier today, Hatton may have been an accidental champion. Hatton captured the IBF light welterweight title in a controversial match with 36-year-old Kostya Tszyu in June 2005, and then defended the title against fighters that were limited in ability.

However, Hatton should never had won the title against Tszyu in the first place in my view of the fight because the fight was filled with wrestling, some low blows, a rabbit shot and other such fouls and I feel that Tszyu should have won the fight on a disqualification over Hatton.

It was clearly a mistake for Kostya to defend his title in a hostile arena in England where he was forced to deal with a ton of adversity rather than a neutral country like the United States. That was a huge mistake by Tszyu, and he might as well have handed his title away to Hatton, because of without the similar ability to wrestle on the inside like Hatton, Tszyu was basically out of his element.

It was like a boxer going into the ring against a fighter that is using a combination of wrestling and boxing. More often than not, the fighter that is skilled at wrestling and fighting on the inside will win the fight.
However, the holding that Hatton did in that fight seemed to go a step too far from what I could make out and there probably should have been multiple penalizations and eventually a disqualification of Hatton because he seemed to be turning the bout into a hybrid MMA fight rather than a traditional boxing match.

Following the win over Tszyu, Hatton went on to beat Carlos Maussa, Juan Urango, Jose Luis Castillo, Juan Lascano and Paul Malignaggi at light welterweight, while losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Hatton had a controversial 12 round decision win over Luis Collazo in May 2006, and appeared to lose that fight.

The losses to Pacquiao and Mayweather seemed to highlight Hatton’s severe limitations as a fighter. While many boxing experts and fans alike have jumped to the conclusion that Hatton is a shot fighter, I completely disagree. Hatton isn’t shot at all.

He’s just a fighter that perhaps should have never been a champion to begin with because of the nature in which he got his victory over Tszyu and once he had to face some tough opponents where he couldn’t wrestle, the logical conclusion was that he would be knocked out or beaten severely.

If Hatton had been disqualified in his bout with Tszyu, then Hatton would have been much less of a factor than he turned out to be because he wouldn’t have likely won a major title with Tszyu holding down the IBF light welterweight title and Hatton would have had to settle for winning the little known IBO belt.

I doubt that Hatton would have ever been given a chance against Collazo for his welterweight title, and even if he had, I think the judges would have scored it differently with Collazo getting the victory. Things would have been completely different with Hatton’s career.

He probably would have been limited to fighting mainly on the local scene in England, because he would have lost to Tszyu and there would have never been all the needless hype that came about because of his win over Tszyu. Four years later, nature is self correcting with Hatton being put in his rightful place being stopped by Mayweather and Pacquiao, and now weighing his options for his boxing career?

I say again, Hatton isn’t a shot fighter. This is just his true talent, or lack thereof, being exposed now that he’s finally fighting some good opponents. Had Hatton fought Junior Witter, Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Victor Ortiz or Ricardo Torres long ago, we’d likely be seeing Hatton in the same place where he is now except that he’d probably have an additional five losses on his record instead of just two.