By Sean McDaniel: EBU welterweight champion Matthew Hatton (39-4-2, 15 KO’s) defends his European Boxing Union title against former WBA welterweight champion Yuriy Nuzhnenko (30-1-1, 14 KO’s) on Friday night at the Bolton Arena, Bolton, Lancashire. Hatton, 29, isn’t so enamored with just keeping ahold on his EBU title. He wants a lot more than that, namely a title shot against WBA welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko.
Hatton is ranked at number #15 by the WBA, and a win over the #10 ranked Nuzhnenko will give Senchenko more than enough of an excuse to take the fight with Hatton. Besides that, Hatton figures to be a much easier fight for Senchenko than it would be for him to defend his title against one of the other top welterweights in the division.
Senchenko has good boxing skills, but he would probably be in a lot of trouble if had to defend his title right now against someone like Mike Jones and Saul Alvarez, both of which are ranked in the top 10 by the WBA.
Hatton defeated Gianluca Branco in his last fight to capture the vacant EBU welterweight title on March 26th. It was the perfect opponent for Hatton. Branco was slow, and plodded around for 12 rounds letting Hatton punch and get away. Hatton does well against slower fighters and less well against ones with good movement like Craig Watson.
Hatton doesn’t have much power, unlike his older brother Ricky Hatton. Instead of relying on power to win his fights, Matthew Hatton instead moves a lot, land shots and then escapes to the outside before his opponents get a chance to retaliate with their own punches.
Since being totally dominated in a 12 round decision loss to Watson in 2008, Hatton has become more of a classic boxer and mixes it up much less than he used to. Previously, Hatton fought a lot like Ricky, only without the power. This obviously made things hard for Matthew, because he didn’t have the strength to just run over his opponents like Ricky used to do.
Eventually, Matthew was exposed by Watson in his one-sided loss. Since then, Hatton has changed his fighting style dramatically and is a much better fighter than he was previously. How good is unknown because Hatton has been fighting B level fighters since the Watson loss.
Nuzhnenko, although ranked at number #10, is still pretty much a B level fighter, so it will still be hard to gauge how good Hatton is from that fight. Hatton should be able to win, because Nuzhnenko doesn’t have much power and isn’t much of an offensive threat. Hatton should be able to easily outwork him and earn a 12 round decision, unless the fight is stopped on cuts from Nuzhnenko charging into Hatton head first.
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