Ricky Hatton: Respect

How about fight a legit contender?

Junior Witter was world champ at that time and called Hatton out after the Mayweather fight. Did Hatton want to impress his fans? Give something back? Why not give them the biggest domestic fight there was? The fight every Hatton follower wanted to see? A showdown with his long time rival?


Easier just to fight Juan Lazcano instead though, isn't it? Why take the risk? :smooch

 

Just a joke. Chill.

As for the love, Ricky got plenty of it during his career.

 

He gave us some great nights that I'll never forget. Will be a long time before you see a support like that in Vegas again. No doubt the most popular fighter the UK has ever had.

 

Pac was weight drained.

 

Ruthless, biased appraisal from Oli there, ... in British fight terms, his record is fantastic. From an 'elite fighter' perspective, he clearly falls way short of the mark but there's not one Hatton fan on here who would argue against that, so this analysis of Rickys career is based on hatred, nothing more.

2 weight world champ

6 fights in the US

Awesome fighter when he was moving thru the ranks, i personally feel if Warren let him off the leash earlier, he would've been far more competitive in his defeats, tho would've probably still lost.

He did a lot for British boxing, still is.

 

Surely Henry Cooper wins the popularity contest.

Hatton at least tested himself against the best available and thus attempted to prove himself the best. His reasons for not fighting Witter were very, very feeble however.

 

Ricky Hatton is a hero.

 

:deal

Obviously Hatton fell short of being "elite" in the bracket of your Pacquiao and Mayweather. Outside of the bracket, his name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as any other champion you care to mention from the same time period.

Add to the fact that the fella got Joe Public interested. We moan about there not being much boxing on TV or it not being as popular as it should but as soon as a fighter gets people on board he's ridiculed. See Hatton, Haye and to a lesser extent Calzaghe for this.

Fact is, as soon as someone 'crosses over' or 'goes mainstream' then there are certain fans that will hate on him for one reason or another. I am not interested in those people as there is no reasoning with them.

If anyone wants a serious boxing discussion on what Ricky coulda, shoulda, woulda done then fine. But have to agree that he does not get the respect that he should as a boxer and/or a champion (not in the belt holding sense) of British boxing.

 

I was never on the Hatton bandwagon, I always thought he was quite the dirty fighter, his ducking of Witter was shameless and inexcusable and although I thought he seemed like quite a nice bloke for a # of years I like many have come to view his public persona as being manufactured.
I don't get the "our Ricky" thing at all, it's so transparently football oriented. Hatton could have played crown green bowls and got the same level of support as he did in boxing because he and Warren deliberately played up the ingerrlunnd
angle. Pretend you're the twelfth member of the football team and every moron in the country will queue up to filter the sweetcorn out of your excrement with their teeth. It's sad but true that England is the home of the tabloid and it shows. Minter had the same kind of following it's just that these days they don't have the balls to bottle the ring when the ****** wins.

 

You sir, are a ****.

 

I like and appreciate Ricky for what he was, a good A- level fighter with a nice personality and a lot of fans.

The only thing I don't like about Hattons career is that there are too many question marks, he should of fought some better fighters who weren't P4P #1, and he should of fought Bradley after Pacquiao.

Put it this way, if i'm sat at home, and I feel like watching a good Ricky Hatton fight, what options do i have? Tzsyu is about it, Collazo and Urango are horrible fights, Maglinaggi was boring, Pac and Mayweather both wrecked him.

I'd have liked to seen him take on a bradley, or even a maidana.

 

Not quite the point you are making but Thaxton should top your list...

 

Bang on.

Bang on, again.

 

very good fighter, showed a lot of charachter and self beleif to leave the safety of warren and fight stateside against the best there was, he would have still been wbo champ now, but for taking that tough challenge, a lot of people are arsholes for sucsess, and not apreciative of someone willing to put it all on the line and take to the limit of his ability, hatton done that, and whatever hes done since, is because he can't beleive how 2 faced the english public can be to him, so to all fighters beware, your only loved when your winning.