If Ricky Hatton had been trained by Freddie Roach from 2000 on...

His skills and lack of defense wouldn't change much under Roach, he'd be a bit better if he lived a cleaner life but it wasn't like he had weight making problems until the end

 

He was never going to beat the Pacquiao and Mayweather he fought in his life. Basically he beat everyone except the two men he could never beat, so he did well for himself and made the most out of his ability.

 

:good

 

Roach is a great conditioning coach, is he great at drilling skills into his fighters? I'm not so sure, I haven't seen many of his fighters with decent head movement but he'd probably get Ricky keeping his hands up and not leading with slow left hooks at least

Fighters also revert to type quickly, look how Ricky was jabbing and keeping his hands up initially at Pacquaio then he reverted to type, coming in straight lines with low hands and leading with wide hooks

 

He probably would have done better. He was always limited for the most part, but his style never suited a trainer like Mayweather Sr's because he could never slip and block shots. Roach or someone like Tommy Brooks teach fighters to use in an aggressive style in angles and specific punch selection. That would have helped Hatton who came forward in a straight line. I thought he did ok with his original trainer, he just needed better footwork and strategies going into fights.
With Pac he was just lost, he didnt have the instincts to fight like Mayweather wanted him to, so he scrapped that gameplan about a minute into the fight.

 

He certainly wouldnt have done any worse under Roach. All billy graham did the last 4 or 5yrs of Hattons career with him, was get him fit. Thats all. Im not suggesting he would pull up trees under Roach but he surely would have benefitted in some way.

 

I think Ricky Hatton was more of a physical talent than people give him credit for. He was strong at the weight and had good speed of foot. His short arms would always be somewhat of a handicap but could be used better than they were to bring on some unique problems up close.

Mentally, he was a mixed bag. Hard worker and tough, but sloppy and simplistic at times, especially when hit clean.

What if Ricky Hatton had been trained by Ray Arcel or Eddie Futch all his life? A much better fighter that could have given Mayweather a tough, tough contest.

 

Not much better.

I doubt Hatton could stand to work with a man like Freddie Roach. A big part of the success Hatton had with Graham was the fact that they got on so well..... Graham is the sort of man that can be your boss and your friend at the same time, whereas I don't think Roach has that with his fighters so much.

Graham would allow him his little spells of drinking and eating, so long as when camp started he worked hard.

Technically I think Hatton was alright, he was flattered by his pre-Tszyu opponents a bit, then the Tszyu fight took a lot out of him.... from then on he was trying to knock everybody out in the first round for some reason, instead of using his fast feet and ability to give angles and draw leads from the opponent.

 

I agree with this, thats why I say if he had more of a method to his attacking style, he could have done better at the top level. You can be all offense and not great at defense, but you have to attack in ways that you dont leave yourself open to get flattened and he never learned how to do that.

 

Sometime circa 2003 or 4 he would have morphed into an uber combination of Tony Sibson and John Conteh.

 

Yeh i can see that being possible on a boxing level but with Hatton's personality traits i could never see him being diciplined enough out of the ring as Ricky attemped to mimic his hero Duran's lifestyle out of the ring what with the "If he could do it so can I":yep

The Duran/Hearns fight should have been enough tutorial about rapid weight gain & loss juxtaposed with a dismissive attitude to an opponant & then ****ing every ***** in sight & glagging every beer offered in the build up to a SuperFight.

 

If my aunt had balls...