After watching Brook practically walk through Senchenko on Saturday night it got me thinking that even though Hatton had been out for 3 years he really was fighting a D level fighter. Was Hatton really that good to begin with or was he more hype than substance??
Senchenko is rubbish and was a paper titlist. Hatton was game and well-meaning in his return but maybe 10% of what he once had been.
Its just the natural order of things,I think.Hatton was a once world class fighter who'd been out too long.Would have beat Senchenko in his prime,despite being a smaller man.Brook is either at,or near to,world class.A younger man than Senchenko,with ambition.None of this makes Senchenko a bad fighter.Hes an ex world champion with 2 losses.
Senchenko is/ was merely decent. Brook is a hungry young man coming up towards world title class. Hatton by that stage was a washed up 34 year old who had spent the 3 1/2 years since he last stepped into the ring eating junk, drinking guiness and ballooning up to double his fighting weight as well as ingesting half a Bolivian rainforest up his nose! You do the math!!!
The Hatton who fought Senchenko was a shadow of his former self. You can't abuse your body with recreational drugs and massive weight gain and expect to be the same fighter. He was slower, he was very easy to hit and had terrible stamina. When has Hatton ever gassed in a fight previously? Even then he battered him for a few rounds. I like Kell Brook. While he is not overly gifted like Khan he is well schooled and is more effective than he looks. Doubt he will become a dominant champion but I think he's good enough to operate on a world level and even pick up a title if he faces the right opponent.
All true. :good No, and he isn't a bad fighter - but neither is he great and for a world titlist he was pretty dire. The fact that he and Mayweather co-reigned in the same division at one point is a stark commentary on the absurd state of the game with the multiple org alphabet soup when you cam have the #1 p4p as champ alongside some guy who in reality is maybe #25 or lower h2h in the division and they are both technically at the same pinnacle of achievement on paper. Bundrage and Smith are ex world champions too. As for having only two losses, well those represent his two steps up in class. When you get past Malignaggi and Brook (stoppage losses, both, and you can argue he didn't win a round in either while they lasted) the high points of his resume are weight-hopping journeyman Marco Avendano, shot to bits rusty Hitman, and countryman Nuzhnenko who took him life and death and later got defeated clearly by Matthew Hatton... His forte is putting jab clinics on slow B- to C+ level opponents, and he did a fine job of that up to and including his title reign. Any higher and he gets found out quickly with his utter lack of power, versatility, adaptability, or durability.
Hatton should have had a couple of tune up fights to get the stamina levels up and get used to taking shots again, he was never going to be as good as the younger version but i believe his comeback would have been better if the right route was taken.
Probably. While he was a shitty belt-holder, Senchenko was probably too much too soon with that much rust. Hatton needed to look a bit further down the totem pole to begin his climb anew. As is often the case, however, money talks. Hatton and Malignaggi stood to make a lot in their planned rematch (which Hatton vs. Senchenko was meant to set the stage for) and so things got rushed with the haste of greed overpowering the steady hand of sound judgment
I could'nt really understand Hatton before the comeback as he contradicted himself by saying the comeback is "about more than world titles" , then on the back of that saying anything less than competing at the top level wouldnt be enough and he believed he could win another world title. If it was about redemption start a bit lower then build on it and see how far he could go, i am sure it could have ended with more success than it did.
Hatton was that bad, i mean seriously watch that fight and look how shot Hatton was, he hadn't boxed in 3 years and those years were spent boozing and snorting coke, Senchenko before the KO was maybe winning by a round, Senchenko is a fringe world level fighter, Brook still hasn't proven anything and won't until he fights a real top WW
To answer the second part of your question...yes, Hatton was a good fighter back in the day. However, he was nowhere near the fighter he once was when he fought Senchenko and still managed to perform well in the first part of the fight. In my mind the fact that Hatton could be competitive with Senchenko after 3 years off, 2 knockout losses (one of which was absolutely brutal), along with years of blowing up and burning off weight...does not speak very highly of Senchenko's abilities on the world level. But back to the point, don't let the loss to Senchenko fool you, Hatton was good. He just wasn't good anymore when he got to Senchenko.
Hatton was always overrated. He would've struggled with Senchenko even in his "prime". The man simply had horrendous boxing skills and a very low boxing IQ. I'd hardly say Brook walked through Senchenko either. He was wobbled and had competitive rounds with a guy who was stopped by PAULIE.
Kell was good but Hatton was a bit silly , to come back and in his first fight take on a geezer who was world champ and only lost his belt in his last fight ,crazy ,thinka couple of 8 maybe ten rounders and eased back in , Hatton was a great fighter,but in that fight ,he just thought I don't want this more,round later he was stopped. Definatly a good win for kel though.