By Scott Gilfoid: Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KO’s) is like a lot of old fighters that make the mistake of stepping away from the game and assuming he can come back in the same form that he was at when he left off from the game three years ago. The mind plays tricks on fighters by making them think they can still fight like they used to, but the fact is they rarely do.

The body ages, and the fighter ends up getting slapped around and humiliated 9 times out of 10 by some sorry opponent they take on early in their comeback. I see this as Hatton’s fate in his November 24th comeback fight agaisnt former WBA World welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko (32-1, 21 KO’s) at the Manchester Arena, in Manchester, UK.

Hatton thinks he can still fight at the same level he once did eons ago, and he’s going to find out the hard way that he’s not even close to what he once was. The thing is even in 2009 in Hatton’s last fight, you could have made a good argument that he was already shot to hell even then.

Now Hatton’s coming back after three years of good living, eating the bests, drinking the best drink and living the plush lifestyle of the nouveau riche. Hatton is going to get smashed by Senchenko on November 24th and it doesn’t matter that Senchenko was little more than a paper champion during the three years that he held the World Boxing Association 147 pound title. He’s still going to have enough left to beat the smallish, ring rusty, and aging Hatton.

Hatton is hoping to get by Senchenko so that he can move onto a world title shot against WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi, but that’s not going to happen. Senchenko is going to ruin Hatton’s dreams of the Malignaggi, Kell Brook and Amir Khan fight by handing him a nice whipping in front of Hatton’s own loving British fans in Manchester.

A loss for Hatton will almost surely sending him skittering back into retirement, and hopefully not good drink. The worst thing Hatton can do is try to find solace in the bottle after the Senchenko fight, because it’s not going to change anything by making the loss go away. Hatton will still have to get up and face himself in the morning after the loss knowing full well what happened in the ring against the Ukrainian.