By William Mackay: Former two division world champion Ricky Hatton (45-3, 32 KO’s) summed up perfectly what his problem was in losing tonight to Vyacheslav Senchenko (33-1, 22 KO’s) by saying “It’s not there anymore.” Hatton is talking his deteriorated skills after his 9th round knockout loss. Hatton was hit with a left to the body and he couldn’t get back tonight in his comeback fight at the Manchester Arena, in Manchester, England.

Hatton said after the fight at the post-fight press conference “It’s not there anymore. Too many hard fights, burning the candle at both ends, I lost 4 1/2 stones preparing for this fight. I’m not going to put myself through that torture again. I had to find out if I could mix it at the world level, but I can’t.”

Hatton didn’t look much worse than he did in his previous fight before that against Manny Pacquiao back in 2009. Hatton was a little bit faster in that fight, he was a little stronger, and a little more active, but for the most part Hatton was pretty much the same fighter he was back then. Not much had changed.

Hatton was still easy to hit, and still plodding forward without much defense. Senchenko had problems hitting Hatton because he didn’t have the head movement to get out of the way of Senchenko’s jabs and power shots. Once Senchenko started turning up the heat on Hatton in the 6th round it was only a matter of time before he got a stoppage.

Hatton said “I thought I was four rounds up.”

I had Hatton up by a round at best, but four rounds is a bit much.

The thing that was missing from Hatton’s game tonight more than anything was his accuracy. He was so far off the mark with many of his power shots, and this had to contribute to wearing him down because Hatton continued to miss with his punches all the way to the 9th round when he was stopped by a body shot from Senchenko. Hatton could have helped himself if he had fought some tune-up bouts because they at least would have helped sharpen his accuracy and helped his stamina.