Hattons Prime - The myth

[Boxer4life]

you must be a pacqiou fan....i love pacman...but seriously...hatton was so out of it by then...he struggled with paulie for christ sake, never said he would win, i just def think itd be a war, dont get offended on pacqious behalf, pacqiou has a ton of credible fights on his resume....hattons not one of them

[Snakey]

you must be a pacqiou fan....i love pacman...but seriously...hatton was so out of it by then...he struggled with paulie for christ sake, never said he would win, i just def think itd be a war, dont get offended on pacqious behalf, pacqiou has a ton of credible fights on his resume....hattons not one of them

...your kidding right....I picked Hatton to beat Pac. Hatton had just put on a masterful boxing clinic against Paulie and hes suddenly way out of it. Lets be clear, Hattons shit tactics against Pac has more to do with his poor performance than Hatton being past it. He had a bad gameplan, thats why he lost. Pac has dropped Mosley, had Margarito out on his feet, wobbled Delahoya (weight drained none the less) and koed hatton..I think we can all agree Pac has decent power at 140 and 147 so chin has nothing to do with it. A good power puncher can crack anyones chin if they land enough and I do not believe Mayweather hurt hattons punch resistance that much.

Hatton got pissed off with Cortez...yet another bad gameplan, it has nothing to do with hattons physical prime.

JT I agree Mayweather systematically broke Hatton down BUT Hatton wasnt being rocked constantly and wasnt really in trouble until the final round.

Fact of the matter is Hatton started fighting decent opposition after he fought Tszyu and your always going to look a little less dominant when fighting people more on your own level. You cant say you expected hatton to perform like he did against tackie or a past it vince phillips against guys like Collazo and mayweather. Two different levels completely.

FACT (sorry Fenster im borrowing this, you can have it back in the morning ) - Hattons gameplan is the reason for his shit performance against Pac (he was supposed to jab and box him...he tried to bull rush him...how can anyone not see this as him going away from the gameplan )

[Snakey]

Oh and I just thought of another thing.


Hatton fans answer me this - Kostya Tszyu was apparently at his peak when Hatton beat him after he demolished Sharmba (you guys say this all the time). This is all based on his performance before his last fight. Hattons last fight was against Paulie which he fought quite well and put on a boxing clinic so how can you now claim he wasnt at his best when he fought Pac? And if you wanna say it was evident against Lazcano that he was going down hill then its only fair that we say Tszyu was going down hill as seen in the Leija fight.


Just some food for thought


(Sorry I know this part has turned into a Tszyu/Hatton thing but I only just thought of this after my last post and just had to ask )

[0james0]

Hatton beat Malinaggi becasue Paulie has no power and he could just walk through his shots. I remember watching the fight thinking how easily Hatton was getting tagged, it wasn't a complete one sided beatdown, it was just (like many of Paulie's fights) one fighter was doing damage with shots, the other wasn't.

Hatton was in his peak against Mayweather, he was in the shape of his life and everything (head, training etc) was in the right place. After the Mayweather loss, he was never the same, the loss hit him hard.

It's not fair to compare Tszu losing to Hatton losing, different fighters cope in different ways and with Hattons mentality, the fact he felt he had let down thousands, if not millions of die hard fans is a different experience to what most boxers will ever be fortunate enough to feel.

If Hatton was in his prime vs Pac, why would he not fight on after? He didn't, because he couldn't and he knew he was over the hill. I'm not saying the Pac fight was ever going to have a different result, but that certainly wasn't Hatton at his best.

By then, his punch resistance had gone, probably because of his out of the ring activities.

[p4pking]

I don't think Hatton was at all in his best form, but suspect we saw the same fight we would have anyways. It's more a case of how good Pacquiao actually was on that night, Hatton would've never had a prayer of not being stopped in some fashion imo.

[Mattyhitman]

you must be a pacqiou fan....i love pacman...but seriously...hatton was so out of it by then...he struggled with paulie for christ sake, never said he would win, i just def think itd be a war, dont get offended on pacqious behalf, pacqiou has a ton of credible fights on his resume....hattons not one of them

...your kidding right....I picked Hatton to beat Pac. Hatton had just put on a masterful boxing clinic against Paulie and hes suddenly way out of it. Lets be clear, Hattons shit tactics against Pac has more to do with his poor performance than Hatton being past it. He had a bad gameplan, thats why he lost. Pac has dropped Mosley, had Margarito out on his feet, wobbled Delahoya (weight drained none the less) and koed hatton..I think we can all agree Pac has decent power at 140 and 147 so chin has nothing to do with it. A good power puncher can crack anyones chin if they land enough and I do not believe Mayweather hurt hattons punch resistance that much.

Hatton got pissed off with Cortez...yet another bad gameplan, it has nothing to do with hattons physical prime.

JT I agree Mayweather systematically broke Hatton down BUT Hatton wasnt being rocked constantly and wasnt really in trouble until the final round.

Fact of the matter is Hatton started fighting decent opposition after he fought Tszyu and your always going to look a little less dominant when fighting people more on your own level. You cant say you expected hatton to perform like he did against tackie or a past it vince phillips against guys like Collazo and mayweather. Two different levels completely.

FACT (sorry Fenster im borrowing this, you can have it back in the morning ) - Hattons gameplan is the reason for his shit performance against Pac (he was supposed to jab and box him...he tried to bull rush him...how can anyone not see this as him going away from the gameplan )

Good thread for the Hatton bashers, but some googd points raised.

The circumstances around the Pac loss goes a bit deeper than his gameplan. The help he received, or lack of it, from Floyd Snr was a big factor in the way he felt physically going into the fight. Any gameplan went out the window the day before the fight when he felt drained and weak. The training programme Floyd snr set for him didnt agree with him and felt physically weak going into the fight.
Common knowledge Ricky never performed well against southpaw's, you would of thought a trainer in the calibre of Floyd snr would address this - Nope - not one aspect of the training camp focused on this, very strange in my book.
Ricky's dad wanted this fight called off when he saw the state of Ricky when he landed in Vegas a couple of days before the fight. Ricky knew he had 2-3 rnds in him for this fight and went balls out to bullrush him and take him out. He rushed in he got caught, he got Sparked, end of.

In answer to the Prime question, I would say between 2003 -2007, from Phillips till Floyd really, after that personel and outside of boxing issues took a hold of his lif. His inbetween fight binges finally caught up with him.

[miron_lang]

Is there a british poster or a hard core Floyd fan in here that thinks Hatton was in his prime againts Pac?

[Taffturner]

Hatton never dodged anyone, he always chased the worlds best and he always gave 100%, how can people condem his career just cos he fell short against the 2best p4p, hatton didnt actually do that bad against floyd and he was fighting joe cortez aswell that nite!! Which was a shame cos mayweather had enuff class to beat hatton without needin help from the ref, ok hatton got blasted by pac but that was the best punch pac has ever or will ever land! I also think hatton had taken afew too many punches in his career by then, hattons drug shame was awful and is to see any boxer fall diwn that road, but no one pulls oscar to bits over his rehab/drugs problem, boxings all these guys live for and when its taken away it must be hard to handle, please dont get me wrong im not sayin ricky was p4p the best and most talented boxer on the planet, but he made up for it in power, heart and a will to win, i dont see how anyone can say hatton wasnt world class?!?

[TitoFan]

Hatton was NEVER world-class. Hatton had a "perfect-storm" type of moment against Kostya Tszyu, and the snowball (hype) began rolling down the hill, gathering size and momentum as it rolled along. Hatton himself got caught up in it, and declared he was fighting for world's p4p both against Mayweather and against Pac, both of whom brought him back to his senses. (Well... in Pac's case, he actually got separated from his senses). In reality, had he earned both of those shots? Probably not.

Loving a fighter, and insisting he's world-class when he's not, are two completely different things. Nothing against Hatton the person, he was/is very engaging. He may have lost his humility somewhere along the line, but that's understandable when you've got an entire nation telling you you're the best in the world.

[BIG H]

You can say that he was never "Great" but of course he was "World class"

[TitoFan]

Depends, Big H. To me, "world-class" is greater than "great". From that perspective, I'd rather call him "great" than "world-class". Depends on definitions, I guess.

[El Kabong]

Ricky was a very polarizing his fans thought he would beat anyone and everyone who ever laced up gloves. He was good, he hit 140 at the right time and he avoided certain fighters, let's be honest. Hatton vs Cotto at any point in time Cotto wrecks him.

The Floyd fight was at 147 in hindsight it was good that Ricky lasted as long as he did. It tells me Floyd never trusted himself fighting Ricky at 140.

Pac just crushed Ricky it would have happened at any weight because STYLES MAKE FIGHTS.

[BIG H]

World class to me, means amongst the best in the world at that time. If you are fighting for the championship of the world ( not just alphabet) and are winning, surely by definition you are 'World Class'

[TitoFan]

That's what I thought. Then I guess we'll agree to disagree.

[Dia bando]

Ricky was a World Champion so he was more than World Class, he had to have class to be a Champion tito?. is this something to do withto much.