I don't know about everyone, but im really looking at hatton differently. if there's hit and run there's also hit and clutch. john ruiz have this strategy and it got him 3 reigns as paper champ. hatton probably perfected the style. he complimented it with excellent bodywork, tremendous stamina, and excellent holding technique. and it will probably take him a longer way too. i know some of you likes him. i don't hate him. it's just that he grabs so much it's an eyesore. all you see is brute force trying to wear the other guy out. he did it against tszyu, then castillo. just the fights i've seen. given the right referee who won't allow him to, i wonder what happens. that beaing said, floyd should hire a 147 lb. octopus for a sparring partner.
there is a huge difference between what that joke Ruiz did and what Hatton has been doing. Look at punch stats or clinch stats for that matter. I think Ruiz clinched like 250 times against Oquendo.
Muhammad Ali did it quite a bit in his 2nd reign. Jack Johnson did it quite a bit too. I can't tell you exactly how much because if I tried to watch more of his fights I'd fall asleep. But it's really not new.
At least Hatton usually gets 3 or 4 punches in before he clinches. Ruiz was literally jab and clinch.
Go watch the KT fight again, there is minimul holding it was just Hatton going forward throwing punches and being a bit messy.
agree on everything but being a bit messy. the hatton holding theory has got out of control. how anyone can say that the tszyu fight was anything but a great advert for boxing is beyond me. great, great battle. also, castillo was the one initiating the clinches vs hatton, but i didn't feel that was over the top
well, i'd like to say Jack johnson is the pioneer. he may be the first to fully utilize it. but, i think nothing is perfect the first time around.
:good It was a much more popular style back then. Jim Jeffries did similar work. People give John Ruiz a lot of crap...but what he did was legal, although sometimes boring. He showed in some of his fights (Holyfield, Chagaev) that if you're willing to slug with him on the inside, you can make a good fight out of it. But when guys aren't willing to fight on the inside with him, it ends up a mauling match. John Ruiz was a damn good fighter in his prime. Never the best, but a tough hombre.
Hatton doesnt really hold. He burries his face head first into his opponents chest and just tries bullying you into the ropes. Its usually his opponent that have nothing else to do but hold. Like Castillo who was doing most of the holding in the last fight.
it pains me, but i agree. to come back from that 19sec loss vs tua takes real character and belief. very underrated.
i can see the similarities between hatton and ruiz. hatton is always on the balls of his feet , jabbing and hooking his way to the inisde then looking once inside to get angles for uppercuts/body shots/tie up with the right work with the left/punch out of clinces and then throw power shot after power shot all with good speed. just like ruiz , head down/flat footed plodder , jab if it misses into the clinch and wait for the ref to break. if hatton was a 220 heavyweight , he would be nigh on unbeatable, as no heavyweight could match the intensity and speed. hatton flaws are exaggerated IMO. only 1 fight in his entire career against urango was boring IMO. he said because he had flu and got drained by the heat when he had been training with air conditioning, which he said was a mistake.