Hatton vs. Marquez: Is Ricky too fat to still fight?

By Boxing News - 11/25/2009 - Comments

hatton443347By Scott Gilfoid: Recently, in seeing a portly Ricky Hatton take part in a professional wrestling competition, I thought to myself that Hatton will never be able to get back down in weight enough where he’ll be an effective fighter. Hatton looked to be close to 200 pounds in his wrestling bout, with three chins and a coat of fat on him that made Hatton look like a big beach ball in appearance. I had to taka a close look at Hatton when he came out for the match to make sure he wasn’t wearing a fat suit because it was downright shocking to see how badly Hatton had left himself go since his May 2nd loss to Manny Pacquiao.

I can’t imagine what Hatton has been eating or drinking since that defeat to put that kind of tonnage on his body, but it must have been pure sludge to get to the state he’s in now. But the question is can Hatton take off enough of his blubber to get ready for a fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. There is talk of Hatton taking a vacation over the Christmas holidays before he makes the next step with his boxing career.

However, I can only imagine how many pies, cookies, and drinks that Hatton will stuff down his gullet during the Christmas holidays. I hope he doesn’t, but I can see Hatton getting up well over 200 pounds – if he’s not there already, before he makes the move to get back into boxing. If Hatton does choose to fight Juan Manuel Marquez in early 2010, I don’t know how Hatton will be able to take off enough of the fatty tissue to get ready to fight. I imagine that Hatton can get down to 140 if he starves himself enough and trains like a dog in camp.

It would basically mean that Hatton’s training camp would be in effect a fat farm for him to lose the weight rather than a training camp where Hatton is working on improving. When you get way out of shape like Hatton clearly is, it takes a considerable amount of time to take enough weight off for a person to train effectively. Maybe Hatton can fight Marquez at a catch weight of 160.

I can see Hatton getting to that weight without too much problems. Marquez would be a blister bag at that weight, because he already looks as slow as heck at 144. That would be a benefit to Hatton I imagine. However, Hatton probably won’t be much faster than Marquez at that kind of weight. Personally, I think Hatton gets knocked out by Marquez no matter what weight Hatton chooses to come in. He has too much weight to take off and he’ll likely do it in a short amount of time if he does choose to stage a comeback.

If Hatton took things slow and trained over a period of a year to get back into shape, I think he might be good enough to lose a close 12 round decision. But not if Hatton trains furiously for three months to melt off 50 to 80 pounds of pure blubber. That’s too much to take off without it having a huge effect on Hatton’s performance. If Hatton does come back, he should go for easier fighter than Marquez, someone like Amir Khan. Even a fat Hatton would have a chance to beat Khan if he can catch up to him and land a big shot or two to chin of Khan.



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