By Ben James: There is no questioning that the current European welterweight champion Matthew Hatton (40-4-2 – 15 KOs) has come on leaps and bounds as a fighter in recent years, but his ego seems to be swelling far beyond that of his talent. He recently has been quoted in the press as saying that he would like to be the man to send Junior Witter (37-3-2 – 22 KOs) into retirement, but then reverts back to his big brothers cowardice attitude saying “I am close to a world title shot, why take the risk?”.

Ricky Hatton always said he would destroy Witter, but never had the balls to step into the ring and fight him while they were both young and in their prime. First Hatton said the fight was not big enough financially despite been one of the most anticipated fights in recent British boxing history. Then he said if Witter had a world title he would fight him, then when Witter had a title he still would not step into the ring with the dangerous boxer Witter.

Junior Witter has always been underrated as a fighter, he was never given the opportunities he deserved while at his peak in the 140lb division. Everyone seems to have this idea in their head that his career is about to end, but if you look at what has happened to him in the past 3 years or so you can see that he stands a fair chance of making a come back and possibly challenging for a world title again one day.

Witter has only lost 3 fights in his career. He lost to a prime Zab Judah in a fight Witter took at very very short notice. He lost a close split decision to Timothy Bradley, and then lost to Devon Alexander in a fight where he was struggling to make weight and injured his elbow in the early rounds. There is no shame in any of those losses, losing to 3 superb fighters all at their peak, all of them undefeated at the time Witter lost to them.

Compare this to Mathew Hatton who has lost 4 fights in his career to such great world class boxers as David Kirk who at the time of the fight had a record of 9 wins, 43 losses and 3 draws. Then Hatton went on to lose against a fighter called Davir Keir who finished his career with more losses than wins. More recently Hatton got himself disqualified in a British welterweight title eliminator against Alan Bosworth, and then he was soundly beaten on points by Craig Watson just over 2 years ago.

Hatton has since then become promoted by his big brother who has been using his own popularity and contacts to get Hatton title shots and fights he does not really deserve.

I really hope that Ricky Hatton has the balls to make the fight with Witter in 2011, forget about world titles and paper championships, they are worthless these days, Mathew is never going to be successful at world level, if he managed to become a paper champion he will just have several fights against journeymen, milking his title before getting beat by the first real contender his big brother puts him in the ring with. Mathew Hatton is not even the best welterweight in England. I would pick Kell Brook to beat him, and Michael Jennings.

I don’t want to come across as a hater in this article, I respect Hatton for transforming himself from a below average journeyman into the fighter he is today, he is certainly in the top 5 for British welterweights and that is a decent achievement in itself considering most professional boxers never come close to this level.

The reason I have been so critical of Hatton is because I think there are other fighters out there who deserve a break, but dont have superstar big brothers helping them further their career. Also I dont think he should be going in the media slagging off Junior Witter when he has no intention of stepping in the ring with him. Its just frustrating.

I will end this by wishing both Mathew Hatton and Junior Witter good luck in their next fights, and hope one day the British public will be given the chance to see who would come out on top between these two fighters.