Judah’s playground tactics won’t call out Ricky Hatton

The punching bag is Pacquiao, not Judah - photo loura

Your career record reads 38-6, you’ve been the unanimous light-welterweight champion, but now you have a string of defeats to steadily less prestigious fighters. You need to rebuild your reputation. You are Zab Judah.

What to do? You want to fight someone whose reputation is still intact, but nobody of that calibre would step in to the ring with you at the moment. So you scour the division for someone who has a kid brother you can take on first. Here’s what Adam Fish, Judah’s promoter, reportedly has to say:

“Zab wants to fight Ricky and we also want to capitalise on the amount of Brits and Filipinos in Vegas for his fight (against Pacquiao, the night following Judah’s May 1st bout),” Fish said. “Ashley Theophane’s team have contacted me but the guy we’re really looking at is Matthew. He’s taken a huge step up in the last year. He looked great beating Ben Tackie.”

The comments have not surfaced all across the internet yet, so it is not entirely clear whether those were Fish’s exact words. That said, whether the logic of this particular argument belongs to the promoter or those who report it, it is straight from the playground. Is he really hoping that Ricky Hatton, having seen his brother beaten by Judah, will demand a chance for vengeance?

Matthew Hatton’s reputation has been enhanced of late with the aforementioned victory over Ben Tackie, who Ricky Hatton also beat on his way up to the top. He is the only fighter of note that both men have faced. Moreover, Ricky fought him first. Despite four defeats in Matthew’s career to date, Ricky Hatton has yet to fight Craig Watson or Alan Bosworth, the men who have inflicted Matthew’s two most recent losses.

The sorts of fights that Ricky Hatton is interested in at this stage of his career include, and are more or less limited to, those which, if he wins, will make people more inclined to call him the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. If he doesn’t beat Manny Pacquiao next month then there’s very little left in boxing for him unless he can tempt Floyd Mayweather Junior to stop not answering Mihir Bose’s questions so brilliantly and start boxing again for lots and lots of money. Punching Zab Judah because he mayin the future have punched his brother around a bit - lower on the agenda. Lower than retiring.