By William Mackay: In his boxing news column at the Manchestereveningnews, former IBF light welterweight champion Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) made it a point to says he’s not retired from the sport, and made the usual comment about possibly one day having the urge to fight. This is what Hatton said: “I’d like to clarify the position regards to my boxing career once again. As usual, one sentence out of many can take a conversation out of context, and until you hear it officially from the horse’s mouth, I am not retired. I have renewed my license and if I wake up one day and the urge is there, you’ll be the first to know.”

Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before, Hatton is waiting to see if he gets “The hunger” for the sport before he decides to hang it up or not officially. With over a year since he Hatton last fought, he might as well retire because it looks pretty clear he probably won’t be making comeback. Heck, Hatton looks to be 60 pounds overweight and taking that kind of weight off will be a killer for him. My advice is for Hatton to hang the gloves and save himself the wasted time in someday making what almost surely be a fruitless effort in making a comeback. I think Hatton should retire. The longer he stays out, the larger he will probably get and putting on that kind of weight will pretty much make the decision about a boxing comeback for Hatton.

It’s one thing have to trim off 60 pounds but quite another trying to pare off 100 pounds of flab. That’s just not feasible for a fighter that fought at light welterweight. At this point if Hatton were to come back, I see him having only limited success. He might be able to beat some fringe contenders but I think Hatton would be destroyed by the 1st tier stars like Marcos Maidana, Devon Alexander, Timothy Bradley and Victor Ortiz.

If Hatton does decide to come back, he needs to do turn off the television, get off the couch, lock himself away in some medieval training camp miles away from human civilization and then come back and take on someone like Amir Khan. That’s the only fight for Hatton at this point as far as I’m concerned. I don’t the boxing public would buy into a rematch between Hatton and Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao without Hatton taking on two or three tough fighters and beating them to prove that he’s back. I can’t see Hatton doing that, so he might as well fight Khan. I’m not holding my breath on that happening. Hatton needs to retire.