By William Mackay: Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) didn’t handle it at all well the last time he got beaten in losing to Manny Pacquiao by a 2nd round knockout three years ago. Hatton fell into drink and good food, ending up overweight and unhappy.

To say that Hatton dealt with his loss the wrong way is an understatement. Instead of seeing the loss as something to learn from, Hatton pulled back from the sport and retired. It’s sad and disappointing that it took him three long years to finally get his act together and make a comeback, but better late than never I guess.

Hatton will be making his comeback next month against Vyacheslav Senchenko (32-1, 21 KO’s) on November 24th at the Manchester Arena (formerly M.E.N Arena), Manchester, Lancashire, United Kingdom. While Hatton, 34, is expected to win the fight, it’s also quite possible that he could lose somehow someway.

If he does lose the question on the minds of many boxing fans is whether Hatton will move off into the sunset and retire on the loss or if he’ll and learn from the defeat by moving ahead. The other question in the minds of fans is how will Hatton choose to deal with his defeat if it happens?

Will he turn to food and drink to try and wash away his sorrows or will he recognize that he won’t be finding any answers in the bottle and self pity. You would hope that Hatton will have learned from the loss and would avoid falling into that trap, but you can’t know until that time comes. Hopefully, Hatton hasn’t set up too high of expectations for himself because there’s no shame involved whatsoever if he can’t beat Senchenko.

It doesn’t matter if a lot of boxing fans think that Senchenko was little more than a paper champion when he held down the WBA World welterweight title in the past. Senchenko has been busy and hasn’t been sitting around getting fat like Hatton has been. He’s active and he might have too much skills for Hatton in this fight. Hatton won’t be as good as he once was, and probably not even close to where he was before. That’ll put Senchenko in a good place where he could get a win if he’s able to box his way to victory.