By William Mackay: #9 WBA, #10 IBF welterweight contender Matthew Hatton (42-6-2, 16 KO’s) may have messed up what little chance he had at getting another world title shot in the near future by taking on undefeated Kell Brook (27-0, 18 KO’s) and suffering a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss for his efforts last Saturday night. At the time Hatton was close enough to get a world title shot if one of the champions were to show interest in fighting him.

However, with this loss to Brook, Hatton will almost surely drop in the rankings to near the bottom of of the top 15. He’ll still likely be ranked in the top 15, but it’s non doubt going to hurt his ranking and leave in a position where it’s going to take him a year or two to get back to where he was before unless the sanctioning bodies push him up quicker.

Hatton can help himself by fighting more often against fairly decent fighters. He needs to avoid really good fighters if he wants to keep from getting beaten again though. Hatton showed in the loss to Brook that he has only minimal offensive skills. He’s usually better than that offensively but he was obviously afraid to get hit. But it’s going to take him a while to get back up in the rankings and he really should have bypassed the Brook fight and waited until he eventually got another world title shot. Hatton probably saw it as a hard to resist deal because the money he got for the fight had to be good due to the huge 9000+ crowd that showed up last night at the Motorpoint Arena, but he probably should have still waited until he got a title shot before he took a risky fight.