i was reading the fury/klit thread and where it ranks amongst other great british victories and the old chat about hatton vs tzsyu being a great win gets spoken about. lets be 100% honest about that win it looks great on paper because tzsyu was a great champion but isn't it more of a myth and was really just a master stroke from fw?? no one can deny that tzsyu was at one point the main man at light welter but the tzsyu that fought hatton was not the same person. in 2 1/2 years he boxed 3 rounds against sharmba mitchell and had serious injury problems during that time also add that to the fact he was 36 years old and had a hard career then all of the odds were stacked in hattons favour massively. hatton got the win albeit with the help of some pretty dodgy low blows but please don't carry on saying that ricky hatton beat the no1 light welter because he just wasn't, it was more like when martinez fought cotto and you could see that he just wasn't the same fighter as he had been a year previous and that his time at the top level was gone. a good win yeah, a great win no!! but a round of applause to fw for picking the right time to let hatton fight tzsyu and keep his cash cow making him money.
Hatton was good enough to Tyson an old Tzsyu.. and he's shown he can box really well in some fights.. mainly the one against Paulie.
An ABC don't mean **** though. It's a Lennox beater.. or the Mayweather of the weight class.. Was it lineal at 140? I dunno.
The best being British etc.. and even then of what era? Nothing wrong with the best of British if it includes the Lennox type.
The question you have to ask is was there anyone else better than Kosta at the weight at that time? If not you have to credit Hatton for beating the best - albeit a slightly faded version of him - champion out there. I think it should still be considered a very good win against an excellent if past peak champ. Otto beat a shot to ****, semi disabled Martinez who'd been running from the man most people considered to be the number one fighter in the division. Very different scenario IMO.
I guess maybe that's why they call it the jab.. keep forgetting all the elements is used in streetfighting.
For me, Hatton's victory was a mix of Tzsyu being largely inactive for a few years and 36, Hatton having a style that Tzsyu struggles with, Hatton being extremely fired up as it was his first world title shot ever and a shot that should have come a lot earlier and Tzsyu maybe not realizing how good Hatton trully was. It is still a good win, but, it is no Honeyghan/Curry.
