Richard John Hatton, MBE - has enough time passed to fairly rate "The Hitman"?

Were do we place Ricky in historical perspective, now that his career is long done & dusted (officially 6½ years now since his last climb between the ropes, getting kayoed on a body shot by Vyacheslav Senchenko - but really yesterday, May 2nd, was the one-decade anniversary of his original dozen-year professional campaign drawing to a close with a single quick, savage left cross from Pac-Man) and some of the simmering biases -pro and con - have been given a cooling off period?

His final mark was 45-3 (32). You can make the argument to charitably toss out the Senchenko result, as it came on the heels of an ill-advised return after three years' worth of depression through most of which Ricky binged on enough coke & booze to make Keith Richards blush, and I've never seen anyone claim the Ukrainian would have stood a chance of defeating a pre-2009 version of Hatton. By that some token, however, if we're rectifying mistakes, it would be an inch gained but an inch lost all the same - as he did have at least one decision widely considered to be a robbery on his ledger, over Luis Collazo in his "welterweight debut". So with those canceling one another out, he's left with the same record as stated - with his best victories being over slightly over-the-hill Tszyu, Paulie Malignaggi, Juan Urango, prime Giuseppe Lauri by KO, Eamon Magee, Carlos Maussa, Ben Tackie, Vince Phillips, Jon Thaxton, Ray Oliveira, Michael Stewart, Juan Lazcano, Carlos Vilches, Stunning Stephen Smith, and the more-than-slightly over-the-hill Tony Pep, JLC & Freddie Pendleton.

That is seventeen victories over names you'd have probably at least heard of if you watched a lot of international turn-of-the-century boxing (especially if the UK was a particular area of focus)/I'd heard of personally and knew well enough to contextualize, in any event. Does it compare with the best seventeen victories of, say, all time Great and near-contemporary Marco Antonio Barrera? Let's see: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/the-marco-antonio-barrera-super-thread.514025/ ...aaaaaaand, hell no, to be clear, Hatton's résumé doesn't amount to even a drop in the bucket of MAB's. That's an unfairly high standard, though, obviously. Now that his rabid, perennially "WALKING IN A HATTON WONDERLAND" screeching fan base has quieted down, there is less call to squash their hyperbolic elevations of him to a mythic status on which his abilities didn't ever quite deliver. Nobody in 2019, as near as I can tell, is thrusting him up into the pantheon alongside the likes of MAB, so there's less need to judge him as harshly as in the aughts, when he was still active, with fans doing him the disservice of rating him in the stratosphere where his wings quickly burnt up like poor Icarus'.

A hardcore apologist might point out that he didn't lose until he was on the slide, as men of his chosen style tend not to have lengthy primes and rather have a quick-burning fuse which may well have already begun to sputter out when he achieved immortality against Tszyu - and thus excusing all three of his knockout losses as coming when he was "past it". A harsh critic, on the other hand, would dismiss the upset over Tszyu as being a somewhat overrated triumph (else marred by favorable officiating) and stylistically a stroke of fortunate matchmaking for Ricky...and could posit that otherwise Hatton fought naught but C+ to straight B range opponents for most of his run, and then lost twice, by no coincidence, in his only real pair of steps up against elites (much like what is now being claimed by Golovkin haters, except with them going a step further and imaging the Jacobs and both Canelo fights as three losses).

He certainly was capable of being in some exciting fights - but it was no guarantee, and was highly conditional on a cooperative dance partner. In his nick he boasted a fantastic engine, some very nice - one might even say top-flight - infighting and particularly body-punching for a white boy (or for a non-Latino, period) and decent hand speed...but was every bit as notorious a clincher as heavyweights John Ruiz or Wladimir Klitschko, and was forever wide open to counter uppercuts, and had some crêpe-papery skin. Much as with his résumé, there was both good and bad to be found in his fights and their entertainment value -- and yet in his pomp you could not intercept a single objective word above the din of the Mancunian's loyal contingent saying he was the best watch in the sport, and nitpicking detractors calling him among the worst.

How then, does "Fatton" squeeze into the all-time picture at 140lbs? I think it most equitable to not judge him at welter, as he never truly belonged there (and wouldn't have toed outside his lane were it not for his damned lifelong case of the munchies). WBA Super, IBFx2, and lineal champion + BBBofC and the lightly-regarded world titles of pretender organizations IBO and WBU (the pursuit & retention of which probably distracted him from & cost him the chance to become the Lonsdale outright champ). Decent accolades. By no means those of a divisional GOAT, or top 5 - but is he top 15? BoxRec.com places him #8, just behind Cervantes.

What say you lot?

 

Even the Paulie win IMO has a pretty big asterisk over it. Buddy McGirt takes a lot of undeserved flack and is hardly as bad a trainer as some claim, but he did absolutely ruin Malignaggi's style and took him completely off-rails in his career. Once he dumped Buddy, the ship quickly righted itself. Now, would Hatton still have just had Malignaggi's number regardless of who the chief second was? Maybe. Unknowable. But the severity of the utter thrashing Paulie took at Ricky's hands seemed to me, and still do today, a direct result of the bad advice, wrongheaded machinations and stylistic tinkering of McGirt.