World is right: This isn’t Hatton’s night
Bernard Hopkins says to disregard Manny Pacquiao’s destruction of Oscar De La Hoya. Forget it. Throw it out. Never happened.
Floyd Mayweather Sr., posing as Walt Whitman, offered a poem about how his fighter would win by knockout tonight in which he used the word diggity, which somehow didn’t make the cut in “O Captain! My Captain!”
Ricky Hatton insists the entire world is wrong.
“Unless I am missing something, unless I just see things totally different from everyone else, I can’t see myself losing,” Hatton said. “Standing next to Manny, I can’t imagine how he will be able to keep me off him for 12 rounds. Either everyone else is going to be proven right, or myself and Floyd don’t know as much about boxing as we thought.”
Hint: The world isn’t wrong.
If fights were won on atmosphere at weigh-ins, Hatton would rank as history’s finest. Few if any would equal him and his boisterous following of Brits. They’re pretty much out of their minds in a fun and jovial kind of way.
More than 6,000 fans showed at the MGM Grand Garden on Friday to watch Hatton and Pacquiao stand on a scale and flex and posture and stare each other down.
Songs were sung. Flags were waved. Mario Lopez was booed each time he spoke. In other words, everything went off as it should have.
But not even so many passionate British souls, probably urged on by just as many pints of Guinness, will prevent an inevitable conclusion in tonight’s junior welterweight title fight.
There isn’t a poem written that will save Hatton.
The last time we saw such a spectacle of a British-dominated weigh-in — of the 6,000 there Friday, there might have been 500 cheering for Pacquiao — was in December 2007. That’s when Hatton took on Floyd Mayweather Jr., when the only ones cheering for the favorite were in his camp.
But the following night, speed and skill and boxing technique carried Mayweather to victory by 10th-round technical knockout. The opponent might be different this time, but the script reads the same.
“The first time (Hatton) gets hit, he’s going to come forward and be aggressive just like his old self,” Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, said. “Ricky is a tough guy. I expect the fight to go some distance, but I honestly believe we will knock him out.
“I know Ricky is resilient, but he can’t punch and has no footwork. He has no balance, and with balance comes power. The best thing he does is hold, and that won’t win a fight like this in America because the referee won’t allow it.
“Ricky is a good fighter, not a great one. He’s a great guy. Most people think he is stronger than Manny. He isn’t. Not as a boxer. They don’t have a bench press in the ring. I have the stronger fighter. We are too fast. Too sharp. It’s the same fight as (Hatton-Mayweather).”
Hatton’s side, led by Whitman, disagrees. They are certain the fighter’s switch to Mayweather Sr. as trainer has created a far more technical boxer. Someone who moves his head and uses his jab and believes in defense.
Hatton’s camp and fighters such as Hopkins have said all week that Pacquiao’s win against De La Hoya in December wasn’t all that impressive, that he beat a drained and old fighter who offered no attack or resistance.
True on all counts.
But then you also must disregard Hatton’s fourth-round knockout of Jose Luis Castillo in June 2007, because if De La Hoya was a shell of himself against Pacquiao, that poor Castillo kid had one foot in the grave when he opposed Hatton.
Think of it this way: It took Roach eight years to get Pacquiao to this level of excellence, to a pound-for-pound king. This is just the second fight Mayweather Sr. will work with Hatton, and with apologies to Paulie Malignaggi, the difference between Pacquiao and the guy from Brooklyn is that of Neptune and Venus.
Hatton has fought and beaten good people. Kostya Tszyu. Luis Collazo. But only once has he seen the elite level he will tonight. Mayweather Jr. exposed him. Hatton might box for longer against Pacquiao than he did in that loss. He might not get sucked in and quickly lapse back into his old brawling self.
It won’t matter in the end.
Not even this offering from Walt Mayweather will save Hatton:
“So get your tickets now peoples — and let’s make it clear,
“That the Pacman ass-woopin’ is almost here.
“It ain’t no secret, and I hope you know,
“The Hitman Hatton by KO!”
I wish they were the smart ones, if only to hear what absurd rhyme Mayweather Sr. might babble during the postfight news conference. I wish the world was wrong.
Alas, we’ll never know.
Pacquiao in the 10th, by TKO.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
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