Where am I? Home Message Boards

All that "pound-for-pound" stuff may well be trash; but Kostya Tszyu was one off the best fighters in the world when Ricky Hatton beat him. That's not trash, it's a fact.

Of course Hatton doesn't belong in the same bracket as Leonard, Hearns and Joe Louis. That doesn't mean he wasn't a world class fighter. You don't need to be one of the top all-time legends of the sport to be a world class fighter.

To say Hatton was an "averge pug" is just plain ignorant. He got knocked out twice by exceptionally good fighters. He came up short at the absolute elite level. Big deal. It happens. Doesn't take away from all the quality guys he did beat.

 

"Hatton was never an A-level fighter".....? What an absolute load of nonsense. I'd love to know you're criteria for becoming an "A-level" fighter then, Reevo.

Hatton beat an abundance of world level operators, including a then p4p top-three Kostya Tszyu, and only ever lost to current p4p number 1 fighter's, Mayweather and Pacquiao.

Hatton has been universally regarded as the best 140lber for 4 years and spent most of that time in the top 5 or 6 on many a p4p list.

Regardless of whether he should fight on or not, the guy cetainly deserves his credit - as a very good, world class A-level fighter who was only ever beaten by legends of the sport.

Hatton is consistently underrated by the yanks. He'll prove them wrong again in this fight. 
The comparison between Hatton and Ruiz always makes me laugh, to be honest. I don't seem to remember John Ruiz stopping a top 3 pound-for-pound fighter (Tszyu), crushing a feared Mexican body puncher with his own best weapon (Castilo) or out-boxing a supposedly ultra-slick speedster and breaking him down with ease (Malignaggi).
Anyone who thinks Pacman is near "unbeatable" has an unfortunately short memory span in boxing terms: You only need to go back a year and you'll see him on the brink of defeat against a featherweight whom many think deserved the nod against him on two occasions (JMM).
Ricky Hatton is no featherweight; he's also no 37-year old stick man draining himself just to beat the scales, and don't even think about comparing David Diaz's skills with the Hitman's.
This will be an awesome fight - but write Hatton off (again) at your peril.
P.S Julio Brown are you on something in that picture?

Cheating is still cheating no matter how you shake it up, but some forms are certainly worse than others. The Margarito nuthuggers are really clutching at straws with this argument: there's no way you can compare the situations.
Firstly, it's not beyond the realm of possibilty that Mosley actually didn't know he was being given steroids. Why? Because the line between legal and illegal performance enhancing "drugs" is becoming more blurred all the time. Every single professional sportsman takes some kind of substance to boost their stamina/health/endurance etc, and the question of what counts as going over the line is not an easy one. Countless sportsmen have tested positive for "performance enhancing" substances without even knowing why - often it turns out to be something as trivial as cold and flu medicine. Therefore by putting your complete trust in a conditioning coach you could plausibly find yourself in this situation.
Saying that you could literally see the difference in Mosley though on a fight to fight basis is absolutey ridiculous. The fights when he was supposedly "on" something were some of his worst performances and he looked no physically different to his other fights.
This doesn't in any way make the guy innocent or remove the dark shadow cast by the whole incident. But wrapping a hard physical object inside of your gloves - effectively taking an extra weapon in the ring with you - is a world apart from the Mosley scenario. Here there is no possible plausible deniability: if indeed it happened, then he knew it was happening, and he had every intention of causing his opponent serious harm. That is the difference.