TeamPilipinas.info: A Risky Comeback: The Return of Ricky Hatton

source: Geoff Poundes | ringsidereport.com

When David Haye was asked to talk about the weight disparity between himself and 300 pound Nikolay Valuev before their momentous set-to, he was standing in Ricky Hatton’s own gym in Manchester. It was put to him that the size differential would be akin to him getting into a fight with the Hitman. Haye looked the former light-welterweight champion up and down and said “Not at the moment, it ain’t.”

Everyone laughed, even Ricky, who has once again piled on the pounds in the wake of his May 2009 beating at the hands of man of the hour Manny Pacquiao. Hatton has been concentrating his efforts since on building a burgeoning promotional company, putting together a stable of fighters, and supporting his younger brother Matthew (who just earned a creditable draw with Lovemore N’Dou for the latter’s IBO Welterweight Title).

Hatton, 45-2, 32 KO’s, has said that the “itch” is back, and he’ll almost certainly fight again. That’s where the laughing stops.

Both Richard Schaeffer of Golden Boy, and Richard Williams, chief executive of Hatton Promotions, have indicated that they are in advanced talks with Juan Manuel Marquez for the Mexican to come across the pond and take on Hatton in Manchester some time next year.

Marquez, 50-5, 37 KO’s, was of course out-fought by previous Hatton conqueror Floyd Mayweather, JR., in September and at 36 years of age is in the twilight of an exceptional career. It’s now forgotten that prior to taking on Mayweather, Marquez gave a scintillating performance in stopping highly-touted Juan Diaz in 9 rounds, so he’s still very much a live fighter. He’s still the WBO/WBA Lightweight Champion, although one suspects he’ll need to relinquish those to pick up a Hatton fight.

Hatton, meanwhile, will need to boil himself down to 140 pounds again and whilst he’s shown over a long career that he’s perfectly capable of doing so, it’s what’s left after the fat has gone that causes concern. In the five minutes or so that he lasted against Pacquiao he looked like a man who had come to the end of things, not only strategically but also physically – particularly in his ability to hold a punch.

It’s a sad boxing truism that it’s always the fighter whose last to acknowledge his own decline, and when a money-machine like Hatton is involved the people around him are unlikely to stump up an honest opinion. Hatton appears gravely out of touch with reality when he surmises that he was “winning the second round by a country mile” against Pacquiao, before shipping a stunning left hook that took away his senses, his titles, and ultimately, one suspects, his career.

The truth is that whilst fighters in this era are going on into their late thirties and beyond those that are able to do so look after themselves year-round. Bernard Hopkins, Evander Holyfield, Roy Jones, and boxers of their ilk are always fit, and so can compete into their forties. Hatton puts on 30 to 40 pounds between fights, and has done for the last ten years, and the inevitable consequences of such violent weight-gains and losses are a dissipation of performance and stamina.

For a fighter like Hatton, whose fighting style has always been centered around setting a relentless pace and unforgiving pressure, that dissipation spells disaster.

Doubtless Hatton’s decision to come-back will have crystallized after watching Miguel Cotto succumb to Manny Pacquiao’s punches this last weekend. Hatton will have reasoned that if Cotto also couldn’t match up to Pacquiao’s speed and power (the Puerto Rican was dropped twice in the fight), then perhaps his own defeat was less attributable to a lessening of his own abilities, and more to do with the special skills of the Pacman.

He won’t, of course, consider that Cotto has been in a whole bunch of wars, and was beaten to his very core by Antonio Margarito previously, so that in retrospect it’s easy to surmise that Cotto’s days at the top of his sport may well also be numbered.

Such is the boxer’s psyche. And the financiers will be in Ricky’s ear with promises of vast amounts of cash for the Marquez fight, and with Mayweather mooting that he’d like to fight in the UK, with even vaster sums down the line should he turn back the Mexican.

It’s entirely likely that Hatton can beat Marquez; he’ll be the bigger fighter and the younger man, and once in shape he’ll have retained some of the power and precision that enabled him to dispatch Jose Luis Castillo, a similar fighter to Marquez, a couple of years back. It’s unlikely that Marquez can out-dazzle him as Mayweather did, or out-speed him as Pacquiao did. Should he then entice Mayweather across the water for a re-match and a mega-payday, he probably won’t care that he would be a certainty to get himself knocked out again.

Such a fight would be all about dollars, and little else.

Hatton says he’s going to get past Christmas, and a traditional family cruise he undertakes each January with his family, so that it’s conceivable that when he signs on the dotted line for Marquez he’ll be some 30-40 pounds overweight.

At 31 years of age, and on the back of that crushing knockout by Pacquiao, when he spent several minutes on the canvas receiving medical attention, it can only be hoped the much-loved Hitman knows what he’s getting himself into.