--- Rating Ricky 'Hitman' Hatton ---

thumbsup I was going to post the same but couldn't be asked. We had a dam good run that year. Was a great year for British boxing.

 

:good no doubt, And to think, although woods, witter, Rees, hatton and Clazaghe lost their titles that year, Froch, Khan, Arthur, Cook and Haye at heavyweight all won titles over the next two years and then don't forget Burns in 2010 and Clev in 2011. Americans rip the Brits for having no fighters when really we had a bit of a rough patch for the first half of the first decade in the new millennium, but since 2005 we've really had a great time of boxing up till today

 

I think hatton is more of a 6-6.5, 7.5(most posters here give him that) is a bit high if someone like a prime rjj is a 10. Hatton was a very good fighter but not great, I could agree with most of the ratings here if that scale was base on current boxing scene and not throughout whole history

 

The answers somewhere in betwen. Obviously Ricky wasn't a great fighter and is borderline HOF but I believe he was a good fighter who in all honesty should have been a bit better.
I take some of Scurla's points about Ricky being protected on the way up while holding the WBU Title but I honestly thought at that time he was a wrecking machine.The difference with then and later on was that he was fighting 4 or 5 times a year and was generally in tip top condition he was generally training for fights and he didn't have time to get out of shape. There was an intensity about his work,he was an extremely fit fighter.
Later on after winning the big straps and fighting less frequently the rot set in between fights he was actually a disgrace the condition he allowed himself to be in.
He was never elite but I just have been left with a feeling that he could have been a bit better.

 

I feel a few posters are putting him down a level, Hatton fought the best about, and like any fighter who has a belt these days, tend to pick the money spinners, no shame in that. You could make an arguement against pretty much any belt holder hand picking opponents, the K2s, Mayweather and Manny are no exceptions.

Going back to the OP, actually rating Hatton, I think one thing that stood out in that post, and others' following, was rating his versatility and technical ability particularly low.

I've followed Hatton since his early days, and I think some people have missed Hatton of old who was certainly more capable of 'boxing' than what we saw of his more mainstream career bringing in the ppv, and he certainly was more than capable in the ring in those early days, more of a boxer than people give him credit for.

The Tszyu fight was the defining moment in his career, and rightly or wrongly, he felt that was the way to approach every fight, relentless pressure. Ultimately, I think poor decisions outside the ring led to his demise inside the ring. We saw, albeit briefly, a more thoughtful Hatton in the Lazcano and Paulie fights, but he was gone by then.

His lifestyle had caught up with him.

I think he could have been incredibly well regarded on the world stage had he had the right attitude outside the ring later in his career when the fights were 6 months apart, but how many times do we say that about boxers? Fortunately he did most things right early on.

My opinion, certainly not a good club fighter, certainly world class though, not quite with the elite HOF or future HOF, DLH, Mayweather, Chavez, Pryor or Tszyu.

He's up there though.

 

Hatton = most overrated fighter since i have been watching boxing.

 

The varied opinions in this thread which are typical show that isn't the case.

 

He was VERY overrated. Certainly by his fans. If their was a boxing dictionary with the word overrated in Hatton's mug would be right next to it.

 

Aye by his fans. But not by the boxing world at large.