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Time for the Hitman to ring the bell

Written by Patrick Surlis

Out Cold: A bro­ken Hat­ton after his brief encounter with Pacquiao

In case you saw cov­er­age of the Aus­tralian Open and thought to your­self, ‘who’s that chubby lit­tle mon­ster in the crowd the TV cam­era­man keeps pan­ning to?’ dur­ing Andy Murray’s semi final vic­tory, it turns out it was Ricky Hat­ton. He’s changed a bit hasn’t he?

Now when I saw this I thought fair enough, the lad’s just enjoy­ing his retire­ment, I mean he’s earned it in recent years tak­ing a pound­ing against supe­rior oppo­si­tion. But then I turned on Sky Sports News and every­thing changed. That yel­low ticker tape of break­ing news was scrolling by, I thought prob­a­bly just another of John Terry’s indis­cre­tions, or maybe Neil Warnock’s actu­ally accepted a loss with­out plac­ing the blame at the referee’s door, but instead I got some­thing much more shock­ing, this chubby lit­tle mon­ster was to return to ring.

Ricky Fat­ton: The Hit­man has obvi­ously been enjoy­ing a break from boxing

Now Ricky Hatton’s web­site states that the Hit­man has been keep­ing busy inside and out­side the gym, although judg­ing by recent pic­tures of Hat­ton if you were to ven­ture inside Ricky’s gym you would be a lonely fig­ure. He recently declared his inten­tion to return to the ring in 2010 and although a spe­cific date remains elu­sive as yet, he speaks firmly of his desire to don the gloves once more.

How­ever, this return to box­ing, nine months after his cat­a­strophic and humil­i­at­ing sec­ond round defeat against Manny Pac­quiao, has prompted many to ques­tion the wis­dom of Hatton’s desire to fight once again. The defeat against Pac­quiao, so vio­lent and com­pre­hen­sive, was thought to sig­nal the end of an illus­tri­ous box­ing career of one of England’s favourite sons. How­ever, recent noises from Hatton’s own chan­nel, Hat­ton TV, sug­gest a pos­si­ble fight against Juan Manuel Mar­quez before the end of the year. Surely the moti­va­tion for this is pride; to end his career with a vic­tory rather than flat on his back, semi con­scious and semi naked in Las Vegas (although that doesn’t sound too bad) but a vic­tory against a jour­ney­man oppo­nent would prove nothing.

Hat­ton him­self said: “If I won the next fight I would prob­a­bly call it a day… I don’t want the last mem­ory of me to be lying on my back” but then com­pletely con­tra­dicted this by say­ing: “I’ve boxed at such a high level and I could not have one more fight and peo­ple look at me and go ‘he’s just had this fight just to knock some­one over and end on top’. I want peo­ple to say ‘give Ricky his credit — he fin­ished at the top’.” Ricky, I’m sorry but you can’t have it both ways, either you want to sim­ply fin­ish with a win and that’s fine, if it’s an issue of pride go ahead, you only have your­self to con­vince, or rather you want to be the best and fight the best, which, although com­mend­able, is unre­al­is­tic, fin­ish­ing at the top is not really an option any more.

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This article was posted on February 3rd, 2010 at 7:45 am.

Your Say

  • GREAT ARTICLE. How­ever this argu­ment, which has been going on since the Pac Man fight, is wrong. In the same sport, there is a boxer named Miguel Cotto. Knocked out and BATTERED by Pac and Anto­nio ‘Plas­ter of Paris’ Mar­gar­ito; he is mov­ing up to light mid­dleweight to fight Yuri Fore­man for his belt. Not only did Ricky Hat­ton not take the pun­ish­ment that Cotto took, his oppo­si­tion was at a weight they were more com­fort­able with — May­weather — wel­ter and Pac — light wel­ter — both of whom are top 50 All Time Greats. Just to con­clude, no other group of sport fans in the world would demand an ath­lete retire at the age of 31 and suf­fer­ing only two defeats in forty seven.

    Feel free to com­ment — J Rowe(Report com­ment)

    by JRowe on February 3rd, 2010 at 12:05 pm

  • I appre­ci­ate the com­ment but what I was try­ing to say in the arti­cle is that in my opin­ion any future Hat­ton fights would be ones to sim­ply restore pride and I dont really think that he needs to do that. I dont pro­fess to be a box­ing expert but from where I was sit­ting he was humil­i­ated by Pac­qi­uao, the only rea­son why he wasnt bat­tered was because he lasted less than 2 rounds and he was out­classed my May­weather, admit­tedly two of the all time greats. How­ever, this just says to me that he has noth­ing to prove, hes got the money, won belts, had his shot against the best and came up short, noones ques­tion­ing his record, so to fight again against a aver­age oppo­nent would prove noth­ing, other than allow­ing Hat­ton to say, i fin­ished on a win. also im not demand­ing he retire at 31, just sug­gest­ing that any illu­sions Hat­ton has of ‘fin­ish­ing at the top’ are unre­al­is­tic, if he couldnt do it at his peak I doubt his body could take on the very best now. the aim of this arti­cle wasnt to bash hat­ton, rather to ques­tion what really could be gained from fight­ing again.(Report com­ment)

    by Patrick Surlis on February 4th, 2010 at 1:01 pm

  • Thanks for the reply. I agree that Hat­ton has had an incred­i­ble career, and has lost to the two great­est box­ers since Leonard. But I believe I have the per­fect exam­ple of why Hat­ton should not nec­es­sar­ily retire … regard­less of his abilty to beat the pac man and the pretty boy.

    George Fore­man — In 1974 he suf­fered his one and only knock­out defeat at the hands of the great­est ‘heavy­weight’ of all time (Sugar Ray Robin­son is the great­est boxer of all time). He had lost his aura of invin­ci­bil­ity he had acheived in knock­ing out Fra­zier and Nor­ton. His great­est achieve­ment in his extra­or­di­nary career did not come in the after­math of that bru­tal knock­out; it came 20 years later when he knocked out Michael Moorer to become the old­est heavy­weight cham­pion (IBF and WBA) of all time at 45 years old.

    While I am by no means com­par­ing Hat­ton to Fore­man; box­ing fans are too quick to write off thier favourite box­ers once they realise that they are only human. We dont know what the future will hold for Hat­ton as he still has the drive to fight.

    And to con­clude, in terms of legacy; Light Wel­ter­weight and Wel­ter­weight are the two best divi­sions in box­ing, a huge win in either divi­sion will put an end to all of these dis­cus­sions … at least until his next loss.(Report com­ment)

    by JRowe on February 5th, 2010 at 12:00 am

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