Mayweather's win looking better than Pacquiao's?

Former two-weight world champion Ricky Hatton has revealed his preparations for Manny Pacquiao were so poor he was dropped in sparring.

The realisation that he was not ready for the challenge resulted in him breaking down in tears a fortnight before their superfight in 2009.

"I had peaked too soon, everyone in the camp could see I needed a rest. There was one day when one of my sparring partners knocked me on my backside," he told BBC Radio Manchester. "I came out of the ring, sat on the steps and put a towel over my head and I just started sobbing and crying.

"They say 'you've over trained, you've left it in the gym' is the most common phrase used in boxing but my god it is the truest.

"All this was two weeks before you fight the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world."

Pacquiao destroyed Hatton by way of a sickening second round knockout. The Hyde boxer strung out his inevitable retirement announcement for a long time; his subsequent battle with booze, drugs and depression are well documented and he admitted to the BBC that he considered taking his own life.

"I definitely contemplated suicide," he added. "It was over a long period of time I'd go out, have a night out, come home and I'd be getting the Stanley knife out. I'd be sat there with a Stanley knife going 'go on, do it, go on, do it'. And I never did, but it eats away at you. Who knows one day I might have turned up and gone ahead with it.

"But it was getting most weeks I'd find myself sat on the settee at stupid o'clock in the morning thinking 'go on just do it'.

"I'm sure people have started off the same way and sadly done it. Thankfully through the support of my family, my girlfriend and everything like that it never got to the stage where I actually went through with it."

Understand boxers do come out with some rubbish after losing to make the defeat maybe easier to take, but this has come a few years after. Does this add any weight that Mayweathers was the better win?

I know this has been discussed before but it was an interesting debate and this may add more to it? I was always a believer of Mayweather having fought the better version, with the '0' mentality still present and his punch resistance seemingly reduced quite significantly by the time Manny got his hands on him. Interested to see other peoples thoughts?

Pinched this off boxrec.com by the way.

I'd agree with you now but at the time Hatton had just out boxed Malignaggi (ok he took too many against Luzcano but what the hell) and looked decent in the ring at least. The training camp at the time was rumoured to be in tatters and that now looks to be the case.

Floyd fought the better Hatton, forme there's no question about it.

So Hatton finally admits that Lara battered him in sparring.

Was it Lara that floored him, nice.

Almost certain it was Lara, he was thrown out of the training camp because he had the measure of Hatton every time they sparred.

I saw this on the bbc website earlier. There were alot of rumours at the time that Hatton was getting pasted in sparring but to be fair I think Lara was a horrible choice of sparring partner. Hattons style is to pressure and wear down smaller opponents. Trying to do this against somebody like Lara who outweighed him massively was bound to result in disaster.

Pretty cool, i hope they paid him. Bet there is a few other times where that's happened.

manos de piedra wrote:I saw this on the bbc website earlier. There were alot of rumours at the time that Hatton was getting pasted in sparring but to be fair I think Lara was a horrible choice of sparring partner. Hattons style is to pressure and wear down smaller opponents. Trying to do this against somebody like Lara who outweighed him massively was bound to result in disaster.

True, i could see Hatton being nailed with that straight left evrytime he came in. Lara is far too cute for him.

Lara said he wasn't even hitting hard and holding back on his punches...It wasn't just him that battered Hatton in sparring there was a few others.

No, not at all. Pacquiao iced him with an absolute monster of a left hook at his natural weight, off the back of a superb win over Malignaggi when Ricky looked back to his best. A 2nd round KO is better than a 10th round stoppage.

Think there's more to it than how early a stoppage comes, Mayweather has never been the kind of fighter to go looking for an early knockout.

Lara's a light-middleweight though right? How well would you expect Hatton to do against a guy so much bigger?

I think a lot of negatives going on in Ricky's training camp, Mayweather Sr apparently was only turning up when he felt like it.

I don't think I've ever seen Hatton fight as bad,would never fancy Hatton to beat Pacman but definitely the wrong choice of trainer going in against a fighter like Pacquiao.

The punch that put Hatton out came from the back of the room.

Mayweather Sr is a pathetic egotistical moron and one-trick pony trainer. The Hatton training camp was more about him than Ricky and he didn't even get Ricky a southpaw sparing partner despite the p4p world #1 he was about to face having for the best left hands in the business!

Mayweather Sr is an idiot i didn't like the set up with Hatton at all.

Dont like Mayweather Sr,or his brother Roger or son Floyd, I dont like the whole horrible ignorant pathetic family.

TopHat24/7 wrote:Mayweather Sr is a pathetic egotistical moron and one-trick pony trainer. The Hatton training camp was more about him than Ricky and he didn't even get Ricky a southpaw sparing partner despite the p4p world #1 he was about to face having for the best left hands in the business!

I see tophat is making stuff up again...Hatton sparred with Quintero, Pendarvis and Lara all southpaws in the build up to the Pacquiao fight.

http://www.fighthype.com/pages/content11713.html

Nico the gman wrote:Dont like Mayweather Sr,or his brother Roger or son Floyd, I dont like the whole horrible ignorant pathetic family.

You have to like Jeff Mayweather? One of the most genuinely nice men in boxing, not like the rest of the family at all.

The genius of PBF wrote:

TopHat24/7 wrote:Mayweather Sr is a pathetic egotistical moron and one-trick pony trainer. The Hatton training camp was more about him than Ricky and he didn't even get Ricky a southpaw sparing partner despite the p4p world #1 he was about to face having for the best left hands in the business!

I see tophat is making stuff up again...Hatton sparred with Quintero, Pendarvis and Lara all southpaws in the build up to the Pacquiao fight.

http://www.fighthype.com/pages/content11713.html

Yep, i believed the hype to much, still think Sr is a pretty unpleasant pillock though.

Tough one, I don't think either win is too spectacular given that Hattons record at 147 before Floyd consists of a very very unconvincing win over Collazo and nothing else and his problems in the build up to the Manny fight take away from that win as well.

Floyds was a pleasure to watch because he showed Hatton being gradually broke down and the the finish was the cherry on top.

The Pacquiao fight was too messy and over far too quick for a big fight.

The damage was already done by Floyd, Manny just sealed his fate.

And Steven you are not a real boxing fan if you prefer watching 2 rounds of boxing rather than 10.

Reborn-DeeMcK-Reborn wrote:Floyds was a pleasure to watch because he showed Hatton being gradually broke down and the the finish was the cherry on top.

The Pacquiao fight was too messy and over far too quick for a big fight.

The damage was already done by Floyd, Manny just sealed his fate.

And Steven you are not a real boxing fan if you prefer watching 2 rounds of boxing rather than 10.

Don't be daft. I would rather watch a peach of a left hook than Hatton not been allowed to throw a punch and the worst referee who is forever surrounded in controversy letting Mayweather do what he wants and Hatton not to do a thing. Pacquiao was like a whirlwind and a joy to watch. Do me a favour, don't try and force your opinion on me, yours is Mayweather v Hatton was better, mine is that Pacquiao v Hatton was much better.

steven24 wrote: Do me a favour, don't try and force your opinion on me,

And in the same spirit don't dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with you as daft.

I can remeber reading about a confrontation between Lee Beard and Floyd Snr where Beard was saying Hatton was being over trained and Floyd Snr was basically telling him to suck it up.

Am not sure Hatton could have ever won that fight at that moment in time but whose idea was it to bring Lara as a sparring partner!

Both cracking wins. In the past, I've tipped my hat towards Pacquiao's over Floyd's, ostensibly because it was at Hatton's best weight where he was still very much top dog, and also because it was Pacquiao's first fight as a Light-Welterweight, too. Lest we forget, Mayweather was already a proven world level performer as a Welterweight. From the outset, things were tipped more heavily in his favour for his fight with Hatton than they were for Pacquiao, which is perhaps reflected by the fact that Hatton was nowhere near as big an underdog with the bookies when he faced Manny.

I fully appreciate that Hatton, it seems, wasn't in the best frame of mind prior to taking on Manny, but I've always been (to an extent, at least) a believer in leaving your excuses behind once you step through the ropes. We'll never know for sure, but I suspect that the 2009 version of Hatton would still have beaten the large majority of 140 lb men in the world; certainly not there for the taking. Just a superb performance by Manny.

I don't necessarily put too much stock in the fact that Pacquiao closed the show earlier, as anyone with a brain could tell you that this was down to a difference in their respective styles as much as anything, but I think I might still have to lean towards Pacquiao's win over Floyd's here. Let's not forget that some of Hatton's performances before fighting Mayweather (Collazo, Urango) hadn't set the world alight. There was probably a decline in Hatton between the two fights in question, but I don't think it's as big as some have made out.

I'm almost certain that was some guy called Quintaro (Sp) that was meant to have had him on the floor, but apparently Lara gave Hatton a pasting also, seem to remember Buncey talking about that on good old Setanta.

rowley wrote:

steven24 wrote: Do me a favour, don't try and force your opinion on me,

And in the same spirit don't dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with you as daft.

Didn't say his opinion was daft, at all. I said don't be daft because he hinted that i'm not a boxing fan if i prefer Manny's win. If i wasn't a boxing fan i wouldn't be watching it or on forums, etc. That is daft to suggest that imo.

i think we all agree that the hatton who fought mayweather would flatten the version that faced manny.

manny blasted him away, but it'd seem like hatton had no confidence going into the ring. the one that faced mayweather was a lion who had never contemplated he could lose.