By Scott Gilfoid: In an a recent interview by Ricky Hatton, he said “I’m very proud of what Amir Khan has done, the way he’s turned his career around, winning the world title. But Amir Khan has still to do it at two weights and win four more world titles like I have done. It’s not an impossibility [Hatton fighting Khan] but I’d say that’s not top of the list.” What’s that all about? Why won’t Hatton fight Amir? Is he trying to say that Khan has to win four world titles before Hatton will fight him? Why? What difference does it make how many world titles he’s won. Did Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi have four or more world titles under their belt at the time that Hatton fought them?

Dude, just take the fight, take off the weight and go try and knock Khan out. Heck, I think Hatton is good enough still to do it, which is why I don’t understand his reluctance about taking the fight. Yeah, I know he sees Khan as a friend and all that, but Khan wants to fight him, so what’s the hold up? If Hatton really wants to be a good friend to Khan, he should fight him because that would be really doing Khan the biggest favor of all.

But if Hatton chooses to fight someone like Juan Urango, who he already beat previously, someone else might come along and take Khan out before Amir ever gets a huge money fight in his career. So basically Hatton would be doing Khan a favor by fighting him before some of these other murderous punchers like Marcos Maidana, Kendall Holt and Victor Ortiz get to Khan and possibly ruin his recent string of good luck.

Khan was knocked out in the 1st round by Breidis Prescott in 2008. I don’t know if Hatton is worried about losing to Khan or what, but all he has to do is take a look at Khan’s fight with Prescott to see how vulnerable Amir is against a fighter with big power. I think Hatton can probably punch harder than Prescott when he puts everything he has into his shots.

The only thing I would be concerned about if I was Hatton would be what kind of trick would Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach put together to beat him. Roach helped Manny Pacquiao a lot with coming up with the perfect plan to beat Hatton in his last fight in May. I still don’t know if it was Roach’s brilliant strategy or if it was just a case of Hatton fighting without regard to his own safety.

Whatever the case, I think Hatton can beat Khan even with Roach putting together a strategy for Khan to beat Hatton. Roach isn’t infallible as we saw on Saturday night when his fighter Vanes Martirosyan struggled badly in winning a questionable 10 round decision over Kassim Ouma. It takes talent to follow Roach’s plans and win, and even then it doesn’t always work.

All Hatton has to do is be careful not to throw too many big left hooks and to make sure he covers up more to prevent getting hit so cleanly. The rest of it would be Hatton having to chase Khan down for 12 rounds. That’s the hard part. Khan will be moving constantly and throwing fast punches. Hatton might not look good there’s no question, but eventually he should catch up to Khan and take him out.