By Scott Gilfoid: I got to say that Ricky Hatton’s comeback was one of the most poorly orchestrated comebacks I’ve ever seen before. It was no surprise to me in the least that he got stopped against Vyacheslav Senchenko yesterday in Manchester because Hatton set himself up for it by making a ton of blunders. Hatton was in such a rush to fight for a world title that he cut corners in a number of critical areas that led ultimately to his defeat.

The fight was pretty much lost even before Hatton stepped into the ring because he put himself in a deep, deep hole to begin with by not fighting a series of tune-up bouts before stepping it up against a world class contender like Senchenko. Hatton likes to do things his own way, I guess, and he figured that he would be immune to the problems that normal fighters have when making comebacks. Fighter coming off of long layoff likes Hatton did with his 3 1/2 year retirement take tune-ups for a reason.

Here are the problems that Hatton made in this comeback:

* No tune-up bouts. There should have been at least three.
* Fighting in the wrong weight class. Hatton belongs at 140, not 147
* Bout should have been scheduled for 6 rounds tops, not 10
* Too tough of an opponent after losing a great deal of weight [70 lbs]
* Opponent too tall for comeback fight
* Not using his jab enough
* Failing to make adjustments in the fight when things started going badly

Hatton wanted to cut corners in his comeback and he paid a heavy price for it by getting stopped again. Hatton should have taken his time and did his comeback the right way instead of rushing into it the way he did. If he was a student in school he’d have been in just as bad a trouble if he rushed himself back into a class that he wasn’t ready for. He would have failed in the same way that he did with his comeback fight.

The worse thing is Hatton is now retiring again without even having given it a really good shot in his comeback. He screws things up by doing everything backwards and then he quits. What kind of message does that send to younger fighters and to boxing fans? Quitting isn’t the answers, especially when you rush into a comeback with the wrong strategies like Hatton’s.