By Michael Collins: 34-year-old Ricky Hatton will be coming back this Saturday night to face Vyacheslav Senchenko in a scheduled 12 round bout in Manchester, England. Hatton’s former conqueror Manny Pacquiao doesn’t understand why Hatton is coming back after being out of the ring for 3 1/2 years.
Pacquiao said to the express.co.uk “I do not think it is a good idea…I cannot imagine what is like after a number of years. It’s not just conditioning. It’s the reflexes, legs, mental conditioning and so much more.”
It’s even worse in Hatton’s case because he’s lived a high life during those nearly four years out of the ring and gained a lot of weight during that time. Hatton is said to have taken off 5 stone [70 pounds] to get down to near fighting weight for his welterweight clash with 35-year-old Senchenko on Saturday and that’s a god awful amount of weight to take off for a fight.
Depending on who you speak to Hatton’s either looking sharp in his training or like an old man. I happened to see him go through a brief workout with his training at the BBC website and Hatton looked pretty bad compared to what he once was. I thought he looked great for someone his age who had taken off 70 lbs of weight for this fight, but in comparison to what he once was in his workouts before fights against Kostya Tszyu and Jose Luis Castillo, Hatton looks a lot slower, not as quick on his feet, and not as powerful.
Maybe it won’t matter for this fight because he’s fighting Senchenko, a guy that was stopped by Paulie Malignaggi in his last fight. Surely, Hatton can do the same thing that the feather-fisted Malignaggi did. I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons why Hatton selected Senchenko rather than a welterweight that’s a little more difficult.