By Sean McDaniel: According to Sky Sports, former IBF light welterweight champion Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) will be holding a press conference next week to possibly announce his retirement from boxing. Hatton, 31, had been planning on staging a comeback against Juan Manuel Marquez in the summer. However, Sky Sports reports that Hatton’s training didn’t go well. Hatton has packed on a lot of weight since his 2nd round knockout defeat at the hands of Manny Pacquiao last year in May.

It’s not surprising that Hatton might have problems initially in trying to train while carrying around 30 to 60 extra pounds on his formerly lean 140 pound frame. In trying to take off the kind of weight that Hatton has put on in the past 10 months, it takes a lot of time, commitment and pain. Hatton might not want to have to endure that kind of struggle to get back to his old fighting weight when he’s already made a huge fortune in the ring. At this point, Hatton would only be adding even more money that he will never even spend during his lifetime.

Hatton’s career was sailing along up until 2007 when he was stopped by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a 10th round TKO in December 2007. Before that, Hatton was considered to be the best fighter in the light welterweight division and had wins over fighters like Kostya Tszyu, Juan Urango and Jose Luis Castillo. After the loss to Mayweather, Hatton seemed to have lost some of the drive that he had for the sport.

Hatton struggled to defeat Juan Lazcano in his next fight after the Mayweather loss, defeating Lazcano by a 12 round decision but getting hurt twice in the fight. Lazcano was a good fighter, but not good enough that he should have been able to hurt Hatton as bad as he did. Hatton fought remarkably well in his fight after that, stopping Paulie Malignaggi in the 11th round in November 2008.

However, Malignaggi was a weak puncher, and didn’t have the power or the speed of some of the younger fighters in the light welterweight division like Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander, Victor Ortiz and Marcos Maidana. The win proved little other than that Hatton could beat a guy that has zero power, and who was made to order for him.

In Hatton’s next fight against Manny Pacquiao in May 2009, Hatton seemed to ignore the advice given to him by his trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. by charging out and immediately trying to mix it up with the much faster Pacquiao in the 1st round of their bout. Pacquiao quickly deposited Hatton on the canvas twice in the round. Hatton didn’t seem to get the picture that he needed to try and stay away from Pacquiao and box him instead of trying to slug it out.

In the 2nd round, Hatton went after Pacquiao and was knocked cold by a hard left hand from Pacquiao that dropped Hatton like a ton of a bricks on the canvas. Hatton was out cold for several minutes on the canvas afterwards. The defeat was a hard one for Hatton, and he responded to it by saying he wanted to think things over to decide whether he wanted to continue fighting or not.

His friends and family advised for him to quit. After months of thinking, Hatton said he would be staging a comeback in the summer. However, it is now looking like Hatton has had a change of thoughts about continuing with his career and could be hanging up his gloves next week.