Does Juan Manuel Marquez beat Ricky Hatton?

By Boxing News - 01/20/2010 - Comments

Image: Does Juan Manuel Marquez beat Ricky Hatton?By Sean McDaniel: If 31-year-old Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) does choose to face WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) in his next fight in 2010, does Hatton have enough left to beat him? Hatton wants to have one or two more big fights before he goes into permanent retirement and he doesn’t appear to have much interest in taking on any youngsters at this time like WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan. Would Hatton have enough left to beat Marquez if he does decide on fighting him?

Hatton would have an advantage in size and power over the 36-year-old Marquez, and that might be enough for Hatton to win if his chin can take the shots from Marquez. Hatton has been stopped in two out of his last four fights and he was hurt by Juan Lazcano in one those four fights that he did win. Marquez doesn’t have the power that Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. possess, but does he need it to knock Hatton out at this point?

Many boxing writers feel that Hatton’s punch resistance has deteriorated in the past three years since his 10th round knockout by Mayweather in December 2007. It’s obviously only a theory because the only two fighters that have knocked Hatton out have been Mayweather and Pacquiao, perhaps the two best fighters in all of boxing.

There’s nothing wrong with being knocked out by fighters in that class. But Hatton hasn’t been in the ring since his 2nd round knockout loss to Pacquiao in May, and has put on a lot of weight which he’ll take off. More worrisome has been Hatton’s reluctance to get back in the ring. Up until recently, Hatton was undecided about his career, saying he needed to think about and wanting to wait to get an itch to keep fighting.

In the past month, Hatton has finally come and said that he does want to continue fighting, at least for one more fight depending on how well he does. But instead of doing the normal thing for a fighter who has just suffered a knockout loss by fighting a tune-up, Hatton has mentioned wanting to possibly fight Marquez or Juan Urango. Hatton already defeated Urango in the past in 2007, but that would be a tough fight for someone that was knocked out as badly as Hatton was in his last fight.

It’s doubtful that Urango will be the one that gets picked by Hatton to fight next because Urango, who holds Hatton’s old International Boxing Federation (IBF) light welterweight title, is facing WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander in a unification bout on March 6th. Urango very likely will lose that fight.

Alexander would, a wily fighter like Junior Witter, would likely be not the type of fighter that Hatton would be eager to fight. This leaves Marquez, who is coming off a one-sided 12 round decision loss in September. Marquez doesn’t look at welterweight, and I imagine he would probably look not much better at light welterweight if that’s the weight that Hatton decides to fight him at. Marquez moved up last year from super featherweight to lightweight and he really had to struggle to beat Joel Casamayor and Juan Diaz.

He did beat them, but he took a lot of punishment in both fights. If Marquez were to fight Hatton at light welterweight (140), Hatton might be too big for Marquez and end up beating him. But then again, Marquez has stayed in shape his entire career and hasn’t ballooned up in weight like Hatton has. He also wasn’t recently knocked cold like Hatton was against Pacquiao.

On the contrary, Marquez fought Pacquiao very closely in his bout with him in March 2008, even staggering Pacquiao at one point in the fight. This could be a huge mismatch if Hatton fights Marquez, because if Juan can get to Hatton’s chin with anything hard, there may be lingering effects from Hatton’s loss to Pacquiao and we could see Hatton dropping for the 10 count again. My guess is that Marquez would be too good for Hatton and would likely stop him. I think Marquez is a class above Hatton, even if he’s smaller.



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