By William Mackay: EBU welterweight champion Matthew Hatton (39-4-2, 15 KO’s) is keeping his fingers crossed that he can beat former WBA welterweight interim champion Yuri Nuzhnenko (30-1-1, 14 KO’s) on July 16th at the Bolton Arena, Bolton, Lancashire. Hatton, 29, needs this fight to remain in the running for a possible bout against WBA welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko, who many boxing fans see as a paper champion. Even if Hatton is able to get a fight with Senchenko and does beat him, no one in their right mind will see Hatton as the top fighter in the welterweight division.

Indeed, Hatton would probably be lucky to be considered in the top 10, because there appears to be a lot of better fighters than him in the welterweight division. Matthew doesn’t have the power or the inside game that his older brother Ricky Hatton had in the prime of his career. Instead of slugging it out with his opponents, Matthew Hatton has to find other ways of beating them by boxing and using his jab to score points. Matthew Hatton is more of a finesse fighter, but it’s working for him, at least against the fighters that he’s been matched up against recently.

Nuzhnenko, 34, is nothing special, really. Like Hatton, he likes to jab and move around a lot. He doesn’t have big power and needs to out-box his opponents to win. He’s got some good skills, but he is ever so basic. Hatton has a good chance of beating this guy, but it won’t be easy. Hatton probably isn’t much better than him and is the equivalent of a good B level fighter. Nuzhnenko did briefly have possession of the WBA welterweight crown, but honestly he had no business fighting for a portion of that title and his win over Frederic Klose to pick up the WBA welterweight interim title in 2007 should have been for a much lesser belt.

At best, I see Nuzhnenko as a B level guy and nothing more. The good news for Hatton is that the current WBA welterweight champion Senchenko is only slightly better than Nuzhnenko. so there’s a good chance that Hatton could find himself winning a title, albeit a paper one, if he plays his cards right and gets lucky enough to beat Nuzhnenko and get a shot against Sencheno. Hatton would be leapfrogging a number of other arguably more qualified contenders to get a shot at Senchenko. However, that’s where Hatton’s last name comes in. The combination of the popularity of his brother Ricky, and the fact that Matthew looks so beatable could make him a tempting opponent for Senchnko to fight. You could see how Senchenko might want to fight Hatton much more than say knockout artist Mike Jones, ranked number #3 by the WBA.