First of congrats to PBF for winning the fight and Hatton for giving it his all.
Hatton had been wanting to fight Floyd for at least a couple of years which makes me think he must have had a game plan worked out. However as we saw yesterday it did not work. So what mistakes did Hatton make in the lead up to the fight and also in the fight itself. A few for me are as follows:
1) Strength
Listening to the Hatton camp they were convinced that through all the weights they were lifting that he would be too strong for PBF. This proved not to be the case and in the post fight interview he more or less admitted that he struggled with the strength of a small welterweight never mind a big one. This suggests to me the Hatton camp got it completely wrong and underestimated what PBF brung to the table strength wise. For me PBF has been putting on muscle to step up from 9,4 to 10,7. This suggests to me that PBF is pretty strong himself.
2) Tactics
Were was the plan B? When Hatton began to tire it was just a matter of time before Floyd started catching him with clean, regular heavy shots. Would this have been the time for Hatton to have had a plan be and try something else.
Was plan A executed incorrectly? As has been pointed out, where was the jab to set up the attacks (not including the first round), where was the head movement?, were where the angles? Was it Floyd that made it difficult for Hatton to do this?
3) Emotions
PBF taunted Hatton in the build up to the point where I think he wanted to kill Floyd b4 they even stepped into the ring. This caused Hatton to be a bit gun ho as he put it himself. He was not helped by the points deduction.
I could think of more but I would be interested in hearing peoples views.
Bookmarks