Allot of ppl think ricky was some sort of protected dark horse on warrens leash during the WBU days, and if he'd really stepped up during his early years around the time he was in his early 20s we could have really seen his true abilities at world level, one fight i'd like to turn to is the thaxton fight thaxton is a good journeyman and was probrably better then what he is now, but lets not kid ourselves thaxton is a good journeyman at european level who spent time campaigning at 135 before he fought ricky had been KO'd by emanuel augustus which proves the level of fighter thaxton was and still is despite having a cut i feel ricky should have made easier work of thaxton and was made to go to the trenches with a journeyman fighter.this may show that he was made to be more then he is
It indicates that Hatton struggled against southpaws. And indicates that if you get cut in the first 20 seconds, then your performance is going to be affected.
it takes guts to do 12 rounds given the circumstances but against a journeyman its not a cotto-clottey like scanario. its 1 skilled fighter against 1 limited fighter who's already be beaten before
Remember it was the first time he had been opened up like that in his career. So early on in the fight aswell, so i wouldn't label it as a cotto/clottey scenario. I think you could be right though, Hatton may be overrated. It could be down to the weakness of fighting southpaws.
I think a lot of it is the toughness that Thaxton showed in that fight. Hatton was cut to ribbons but was outboxing Thaxton easily and hitting him with plenty - most of his earlier oppo had caved in and not necessarliy given up, but couldn't hack it. I guess that is one of the reasons why Thaxton is so popular - will fight anyone, regardless, and give 100% all of the time.
Not really. An indicator of his level is the fact he beat your average top 10 fighter, had the ability to beat older upper echelon fighters, but came up woefully short against the absolute best. That is his level, a better than average world champion.
It's an indicator that he was 22 years old and fighting at domestic level at the time. Evidently, the guy improved significantly in the interim period between that fight and his mid-late 00s prime.
