For almost 10 rounds, Ricky Hatton mauled and brawled with Floyd Mayweather, forcing the world's top pound-for-pound boxer to stand and fight, absorbing the most malevolent punches the less-than-acclaimed celebrity dancer had thrown in years.
Once the turnbuckle got involved, however, it was all over.
Early in the 10th round of their welterweight championship fight on Saturday, Mayweather unleashed a left hook that spun Hatton around and sent him face-first into a padded corner post. The double impact dropped the hero of Manchester, England, to the canvas, even if the thousands of countrymen who made the transatlantic journey to pack the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas were, um, enjoying themselves too much to notice or care.
To his credit, Hatton came back for more, rising for long enough to have his head snapped back a few more times before referee Joe Cortez intervened. The end came at the precisely correct moment, just as the challenger's legs gave out and his corner gave up. The obligatory white towel was an unnecessary touch. At that point, nobody needed to be told Hatton was finished.
With power and style he had not displayed since he was tearing through 130-pounders eight years and nearly 20 pounds ago, Mayweather closed the show on a dominant, if hard-earned, individual victory, as well as a year in boxing that even the sport's gloomiest critics would have to consider triumphant.
Mayweather's split-decision over Oscar De La Hoya in May was the richest pay-per-view telecast ever. Great fights between marquee fighters dotted the calendar throughout 2007, like Kelly Pavlik's sensational knockout of Jermain Taylor for the middleweight championship in September, and Cotto's action-packed decision against Shane Mosley last month.
The heavyweight division is still a mess, as it has been since Lennox Lewis retired in 2003, but below that, the sport is as healthy as it has been in years.
While Mayweather's version of a personality will forever prevent him from receiving the mainstream love he craves, and perhaps even the adulation of pugilistic junkies that he probably deserves, he demonstrated again that his fights sell tickets and pay-per-view telecasts. After banking at least $30 million for beating De La Hoya, Mayweather earned another $20 million for mucking it up with Hatton.
But if his highly tactical win over De La Hoya was a little too scientific for the less-rabid boxing fans and curiosity-seekers drawn in by HBO's pre-fight reality series, Mayweather proved more than willing to mix it up with Hatton.
Not that he had much choice in the early rounds. Hatton charged at the opening bell and attached himself to Mayweather, working the body and latching on before the champion could answer in kind.
Mayweather's sizable edges in hand speed, quickness and defensive maneuverability made him a clear favorite going in. Returning to 147 pounds from the junior middleweight division, where he faced De La Hoya, he also enjoyed a significant size advantage over Hatton, the world champion at 140 pounds who was moving up to welterweight for only the second time in 44 fights.
The most telling number, though, was the arm length of each fighter. Mayweather measured 26 inches from the armpit to the end of the fist, six inches longer than Hatton.
Beating a foe who is bigger, faster and has much longer arms is just about impossible, unless the little, slow guy has devastating power. Which Hatton does not.
The Brit did everything possible to negate those disadvantages early on, swerving and swarming to keep Mayweather from settling down.
Mayweather occasionally had room and time to counter in the first few rounds, but mostly he was content to wrestle and either slip or block Hatton's shots.
By the fifth, though, Mayweather began unloading head-snapping counter rights that slowed Hatton just enough to allow the more gifted fighter's talent to take over.
Having solved Hatton's punch-and-grab assault, it was natural to expect Mayweather to soft-shoe away the final minutes to protect his hard-earned lead (for all his effort, Hatton won only one round on the cards of two judges and two rounds on the third), hiding well out of range of the tiring challenger's increasingly infrequent punches.
The specter of yet another disappointing end to a pay-per-view spectacular loomed larger after the ninth round, during which Hatton failed to land a single punch, according to the PunchStat numbers cited by the HBO commentators. Maybe in an effort to silence critics who became more vocal during the more than two years that had passed since his last stoppage win, or perhaps because he realized that Hatton could no longer hurt him, if that had ever been possible, Mayweather opened up in the 10th.
His punches were fast, accurate and powerful enough to scramble Hatton's equilibrium. He also threw them in combinations, a tactic he had largely abandoned since embarrassing Arturo Gatti during a six-round blowout in June 2005 and stopping journeyman Sharmba Mitchell six months later. The 11th-round TKO of Mitchell was Mayweather's last win inside the distance before Saturday.
Moments after Cortez pulled him off Hatton, though, Mayweather did his best to sabotage whatever good will his convincing finish might have earned among his doubters and loathers. Instead of calling out some or all of an elite group of 147-pounders headed by alphabet titlists Miguel Cotto, Kermit
Cintron and Paul Williams, Mayweather suggested that he's going to retire.
Again.
As he did after outclassing Carlos Baldomir in a snoozer in November 2006, Mayweather again declared that he has accomplished all that he can and, at age 30, will walk away in order to spend more time engaged in other pursuits. Like dancing and throwing money at television cameras.
The insincere declaration of retirement is a time-honored fistic tradition. Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard routinely made such pronouncements after victory and defeat alike, only to proclaim themselves un-retired a few months later.
The comeback usually proved to be good for business, if not -- particularly in the cases of Robinson and Ali -- especially good for the fighter himself.
The difference was that fans actually cared whether the likes of the Sugar Rays and The Greatest ever fought again. As spectacular as Mayweather's physical talents may be, it's hard to imagine that anyone whose livelihood does not depend on receiving a cut of his purse will mind too much if he does hang it up for real.
In wrestling terms, Mayweather has turned himself into his sport's biggest heel. The crowd at the fight, as well as most any venue where it was viewed, was largely behind Hatton. The ticket and pay-per-view purchases are made largely by people hoping to see someone finally shut Mayweather's mouth, not to hear it run once more.
In the case of the MGM Grand, much of that support stemmed from nationalistic fervor. As with most fights between fighters of different ethnic backgrounds, be they black, white, Hispanic or Asian, race was certainly another factor to some.
Mostly, though, even fans who admire Mayweather's undeniable ability can't stand to listen to him.
It doesn't help that there's a whole list of qualified challengers whom he is not interested in fighting because they lack the cross-over appeal of a De La Hoya or the national-hero status of a Hatton. Even his best performances have lacked the drama and firepower of a truly great fight, the kind that has fans talking months and years later, so Mayweather needs a foil to produce the spectacular pay-per-view paydays to which he has become accustomed.
Finishing off Hatton in style won't put Mayweather in the same class as all those legends he claims to have already passed. It would be a start, particularly if the welterweight champion followed up by cleaning up the rest of the division.
If Mayweather is to be believed, though, his win over Hatton was the end.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 11 2007 |