HATTON'S ARRIVAL

May 16, 2006 - by Ron Borges

Up or down? Stay or leave? Where does Ricky Hatton go from here?

Despite winning the World Boxing Association version of the welterweight title Saturday night in Boston, the undefeated former junior welterweight champion did not achieve what he had hoped for. He did not take America by storm.

Instead, like his predecessors 230 years ago, the British warrior came to New England and found himself under an assault he had not anticipated from a place he did not expect. He survived the opening salvo, but now must re-assess his position and decide dispassionately whether to retreat or press on.

The plan was for the five-foot-six Hatton to overwhelm both Collazo and America in front of an audience anxiously awaiting his arrival. He nearly achieved that when he dropped the welterweight champion barely 20 seconds into the fight and swarmed around him like an armada of warships in the fight's first four rounds. By that time, Hatton led by three points or more on every judge's card and was banging Collazo's body with shots that sounded like he was swinging a sledgehammer. As he'd done so often in the past on his way to a 40-0 record, Hatton was crowding his opponent and breaking him down in ways that refused to allow the champion to find any advantage from either his tricky southpaw stance or his decided edge in movement and boxing skill.

But things began to turn in Round 5 and from there on the fight had an ebb and flow to it that more and more favored Collazo, whose natural size and strength advantages became dangerously telling as the fight wore on and Hatton, rather than Collazo, wore out. The problem, in addition to Collazo's obviously underrated skills, was an elemental one. Ricky Hatton was not reacting well to fighting a man seven pounds heavier than he was used to.

The decision to move up to welterweight was not one driven by the usual problems making a lower weight. Hatton had no such worries despite his legendary ale drinking. He not only continued to make 140 easily, he was strong at that weight, as his trainer Billy Graham put it, "from the first bell to the last.''

Certainly that is how Hatton defeated Kostya Tszyu to win the IBF 140-pound title last June and then WBA champion Carlos Maussa to unify those titles in his last outing. In both cases he started fast, held off a mid-fight rally and was stronger and more relentless at the end than his opponent, stopping Tszyu on his stool in 11 rounds and Maussa on his feet in nine.

But that destructive pattern was broken against Collazo, who also rallied in the middle rounds but then proved to be stronger than his smaller opponent in the crucial final ones. Collazo had fallen so far behind early that the late rally he mounted that won him two of the final three rounds and had Hatton hurt badly from three crushing right hands in Round 12 was not enough to pull out a decision but it was more than enough to call into question the wisdom of Hatton's plan to try and face down the best fighters in a division he did not at first blush appear strong enough to handle.

"I was the bigger man,'' Collazo said. "He couldn't deal with my power. At the start I could have boxed more but I felt I had to stand my ground. As the fight went along, when he got in close he'd clinch. He didn't throw as many combinations as I expected. He'd come in with his head down, like a little bull, then he wouldn't do nothing. You want to fight inside then fight. If he's a bully why didn't he want to fight inside?

"The guy was exposed tonight. No way he can demand (Floyd) Mayweather or (Oscar) De La Hoya. I'm not even a puncher and I had him hurt. He should go back to 140. If he doesn't think so he should give me a rematch. I don't make predictions, but I'd knock him out.''

Hatton's promoters have no interest in such a fight and it's unlikely anyone else will either, because once Hatton made the decision to move up to welterweight, the sole intention was to set up big-money, pay-per-view showdowns with Arturo Gatti -- if Gatti wins the WBC version of the title in July -- and then Mayweather, who is widely regarded as the best fighter pound-for-pound on the planet.

Although one could justify a rematch with Collazo off of how close the fight was and the fact that it ended with Collazo the stronger and more effective puncher, there is no sound business reason for Hatton to do that.

A larger question though is whether there's a sound business reason to continue campaigning at 147 pounds, a move in weight his closest advisor opposed from the start.

"I never wanted him to move up to welterweight in the first place,'' Graham said while asserting his belief Hatton well deserved the close but unanimous decision he won over Collazo. "Ricky Hatton is the No. 1 junior welterweight (140 pounds) in the world.

"You move up when you can't make weight. He makes the weight easily and can fight bell-to-bell for 12 rounds and be strong but these days, to go down as an all-time great, it seems like you have to go through (multiple) weight divisions.

Why? I said when he was a young lad to him that he would dominate one class. He's a junior welterweight! Floyd Mayweather is (really) a junior welterweight. You want that fight, make it at that weight.

"Too often the trainer is seen as a poor relation. They don't listen to him. But I know my kid. I'll make me voice heard before Ricky fights again.''

It is obvious Graham will advocate for Hatton's return to 140, a place Collazo (26-2, 12 KO) also advised him to retreat to, perhaps to pursue World Boxing Organization champion Miguel Cotto if Cotto defeats Paulie Malignaggi June 10 at Madison Square Garden. At 140, Hatton had always been the stronger fighter, one who wore his opponents down with withering pressure that allowed some of his other flaws to be obscured.

That was no longer the case against Collazo however because Hatton's strength was now not the great equalizer it had been at 140. Late in the fight, after the two had see-sawed back and forth in the middle rounds with Collazo closing in on Hatton both on the scorecards and in the ring, it was the true welterweight, not the supreme junior welterweight, who seemed the stronger man and the more aggressive one in the final rounds. Collazo won two of the last three such rounds and had Hatton badly hurt in the final minutes. These are not only facts that cannot be denied but harsh ones Graham seemed to sense did not bode well for Hatton's long-term future as a welterweight. Frankly, Hatton himself seemed disconcerted by what happened and why.

"Kostya Tszyu was a very, very tough fight but this was a difficult fight for different reason,'' said Hatton (41-0, 30 KO), speaking with two purple shiners and nasty swelling above, below and around both eyes. "Luis has a tricky style and I was moving up in weight and straight away fought a world champion. So I'd say, yeah, it was the toughest fight of my life.

I'll fight anybody and that includes Luis in a rematch, but I still believe I'm a junior welterweight.

"This (move up in weight) was never really in the plans but that's where the (big) fights were. Moving up, I noticed the difference. The force of the shots was very different. Luis was strong inside. He more than held his own. He hurt me several times and I'm man enough to admit it.''

The wonder is whether his promotional team will be as well. The money fights all involve the biggest names in the bigger division with the possible exception of Cotto at 140. Hatton knows this. His promoters know it. Even Graham knows it.

But if he can't handle the weight, if his power no longer carries the same sting at 147 that it did at 140 and his decided advantage over his opponents at the lower weight in physicality dissolves away like smoke into an arena at 147 what's the point? After all, the idea is not to fight at 147. The idea is to win at 147. If he can't do the latter against the top opposition because they are simply too strong for him is there any reason to risk his fistic future on such a Quixote-like quest?

Because there is much money to be made in the welterweight division until the night Hatton's face and will can no longer stand a beating like the one that blackened both his eyes and left his forehead and cheeks puffy and swollen against Collazo, the majority of his advisors and the multitude of promoters he has around him will urge him to press on as a welterweight.

They'll mention the millions he can make against Gatti in a unification fight against an older man with a style similar to his own and remind him the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that Mayweather represents. But will they also remind him of what they saw against Collazo when he was clearly worn down by a true welterweight who doesn't punch as hard as either Gatti or Mayweather?

Saturday night was one Ricky Hatton can be proud of. He survived the assaults of a bigger man, did enough damage early and later in the fight to earn the close victory he received and showed both his legendary relentlessness and a willingness to take pain late in a fight to find a way to win. Although this might not have been the welterweight coming out party he'd hoped for, he won another world title and, more importantly, may have learned the same lesson Pernell Whitaker learned when he tried to move up to 154 pounds in 1995 after a long reign as welterweight champion.

Whitaker defeated Julio Cesar Vasquez to capture the WBA junior middleweight title but he knew immediately that he lacked the strength he'd known at 147 and felt the power of the naturally bigger man and understood there was a danger there it was unwise to challenge. Whitaker immediately returned to 147 and remained there until an ill-advised, one-fight comeback in 2001 after a when his career was well over.

Ricky Hatton and the people around him should remember that before they decide what to do next. Remember that and remember that such an experience did not belong to Whitaker alone.

De La Hoya learned the same lesson when he went up one weight class too many 20 months ago. After having successfully moved from 130 to 135 to 140 to 147 and then 154, De La Hoya went to 160 and struggled with journeyman Felix Sturm. He won the WBO middleweight title that night but didn't learn the lesson as quickly as Whitaker had. Instead he let others coerce him into challenging the true middleweight champion, Bernard Hopkins, and was knocked out for the only time in his career from a body shot. He is now back at 154 pounds and looking strong, having no intention of straying above that weight again.

The lesson learned by Whitaker and De La Hoya has been shared by many other fighters, light heavyweight champion Bob Foster coming quickly to mind. The lesson is a simple one. It is that everybody - and every body - has limits. Ricky Hatton seemed to reach his in his first foray into the welterweight division. Although he was badly bruised and battered, he didn't pay too high a price for the lesson he learned if he learned it.

He was highly paid and won a world title in a second weight class. Neither means he has to stay there. There is still much money to be made at 140 pounds and probably more easily. As Hatton himself said, "I felt strong but me being able to make junior welterweight easily gives my (larger) opponents a chance. I have to look at this with my team. Why move up seven pounds and give them a (better) chance (to beat him than 140 pound opponents have)? What do you want me to do, fight (heavyweight champion Wladimir) Klitschko next?''

In the intervening months Hatton will be told by many around him that this is merely a matter of adjusting to the new weight, perhaps simply a matter of adapting to new circumstances, really. That might be true, but it didn't look true, or that simple, against Luis Collazo. What it looked like was a fighter overreaching himself, an act that is almost always harshly repudiated inside the boxing ring in short order.

If Ricky Hatton is smart he'll listen to the guy in his inner circle who knows the most about boxing before he decides what to do next. He'll listen to his trainer, Billy Graham, and he'll give what he says great weight when deciding the weighty question of his boxing future.