BoxRec

Hatton faces US challenger with reservation

John Rawling
Friday March 17, 2006
The Guardian

Ricky Hatton's next fight will be against the little-known World Boxing Association world welterweight champion Luis Collazo on a Connecticut native American reservation on May 13.
The fight is not the high-profile contest Hatton had hoped for on his US debut as a world champion. "These things happen," his promoter Dennis Hobson said last night. "It's no big deal." Plans for him to defend his world light-welterweight titles against Juan Lazcano were abandoned after the Texan reportedly broke a thumb in training, and possible contests against Floyd Mayweather Jr and Arturo Gatti were forestalled because both now have other commitments.

Oh well....

PPV?

I imagine Collazo will trip over his cat or something this weekend, and T.B.A. will be back in next week.

for WBA title I presume? Acceptable, better than harris!!

Im surprised if its Collazo.

1: He has a mandatory against Urkal comming up, there have already been pursebids. But Urkal accept some step aside money if he will get the next shot at the title.

2: Collazo is promoted by Don King. Has Don King accepted this? Im surprised if he has, but maybe he is getting paid well to let Collazo fight?

Wales wrote:for WBA title I presume? Acceptable, better than harris!!

Harris would be more dangerous than Collazo: he can punch - Collazo can't. Plus he's got a suspect chin, and was fighting in 6 rounders only last year.

Someone must have sold their soul to Don King to get this off the ground.

Someone must have sold their soul to get Collazo a title shot in the first place, his record is terrible, he has beaten absolutely nobody of any note whatsoever.

Not knocking Fight Academy, they probably needed a title on the line to get HBO interested, presuming this is being shown on HBO, but Collazo's record suggests he was never destined to be champ for long.

Collazo got the title shot against Rivera at very short notice (less than a week?)

Someone must have sold their soul to get Collazo a title shot in the first place, his record is terrible, he has beaten absolutely nobody of any note whatsoever.

Not knocking Fight Academy, they probably needed a title on the line to get HBO interested, presuming this is being shown on HBO, but Collazo's record suggests he was never destined to be champ for long.

Subsitute Collazo's name for Maussa

i'm starting to wish he'd just fought M'baye

So, if this happens, and Hatton wins (which he will), does he stay at 147 with a paper belt, or does he drop back down to defend the real title at 140? Given that Rabah will inevitably be mentioned if he's at 140, maybe there's some upside to this. And yes, I am clutching at straws here.

I welcome the fight, if Hatton wins he gets the WBA title, that makes him a 2 weight world champion, but with PBF & Cotto moving up to Welter it gives Hatton a chance to fight 1 of these two & the belt will maybe persuade either PBF or Cotto to fight Hatton.

Yes, it makes sense from that point of view, as all the big money fights look like happening at Welter, Cotto is sure to move up soon, and Mayweather will probably stay there, and Gatti is definetly there.

I do worry slightly whenever a fighter moves up in weight, there's a lot of changes going on here, fighting abroad, facing a welterweight, all the uncertainty and the court case etc. I'm sure I'm worrying about nothing, but Hatton's preparation in the run in to the fight hasn't been great.

I have only seen Collazo once against Miguel Angel Gonzalez, Collazo looked decent but Gonzalez was at about two weights higher than at his prime and had little to offer. Hatton-Collazo is a pretty poor fight.

Foggy wrote:I welcome the fight, if Hatton wins he gets the WBA title, that makes him a 2 weight world champion, but with PBF & Cotto moving up to Welter it gives Hatton a chance to fight 1 of these two & the belt will maybe persuade either PBF or Cotto to fight Hatton.

PBF doesn't need to be persuaded to fight Hatton...he offered twice last year and Hatton said no both times. If Hatton was as good as everyone made him out to be, maybe he'd take it, but that shows where Floyd is in relation to Ricky.

Freiheit wrote:Im surprised if its Collazo.

1: He has a mandatory against Urkal comming up, there have already been pursebids. But Urkal accept some step aside money if he will get the next shot at the title.

2: Collazo is promoted by Don King. Has Don King accepted this? Im surprised if he has, but maybe he is getting paid well to let Collazo fight?

I think King wants Collazo to lose

Mattyp151 wrote:

Foggy wrote:I welcome the fight, if Hatton wins he gets the WBA title, that makes him a 2 weight world champion, but with PBF & Cotto moving up to Welter it gives Hatton a chance to fight 1 of these two & the belt will maybe persuade either PBF or Cotto to fight Hatton.

PBF doesn't need to be persuaded to fight Hatton...he offered twice last year and Hatton said no both times. If Hatton was as good as everyone made him out to be, maybe he'd take it, but that shows where Floyd is in relation to Ricky.

By offer you of course mean ran his mouth.....

That is not the same as sitting down reasonably and negotiating a fight. Anyone can call someone else out, then demand terms which are totally unreasonable, it's not like they actually made an offer to Hatton, Floyd just ran his mouth is all.

Who the hells this Collazo?

Starting to think Hatton would of been better staying with SN now.

Has this fight been officially confirmed or are we just going on John Rawlings 10 line piece?

FA sent out a press release yesterday saying that they had agreed terms with DK to fight Collazo, but Billy Graham didn't like the fight as he wanted Hattons (real) US debut to be an action-packed affair and he thought that Collazo's southpaw style and spoiling tactics would put a dampener on the fight.

jamesmcdonnell wrote:

Mattyp151 wrote:

Foggy wrote:I welcome the fight, if Hatton wins he gets the WBA title, that makes him a 2 weight world champion, but with PBF & Cotto moving up to Welter it gives Hatton a chance to fight 1 of these two & the belt will maybe persuade either PBF or Cotto to fight Hatton.

PBF doesn't need to be persuaded to fight Hatton...he offered twice last year and Hatton said no both times. If Hatton was as good as everyone made him out to be, maybe he'd take it, but that shows where Floyd is in relation to Ricky.

By offer you of course mean ran his mouth.....

That is not the same as sitting down reasonably and negotiating a fight. Anyone can call someone else out, then demand terms which are totally unreasonable, it's not like they actually made an offer to Hatton, Floyd just ran his mouth is all.

If there really was no offer then what two turned down offers from Mayweather was Ray Hatton talking about?

jamesmcdonnell wrote:

Mattyp151 wrote:

Foggy wrote:I welcome the fight, if Hatton wins he gets the WBA title, that makes him a 2 weight world champion, but with PBF & Cotto moving up to Welter it gives Hatton a chance to fight 1 of these two & the belt will maybe persuade either PBF or Cotto to fight Hatton.

PBF doesn't need to be persuaded to fight Hatton...he offered twice last year and Hatton said no both times. If Hatton was as good as everyone made him out to be, maybe he'd take it, but that shows where Floyd is in relation to Ricky.

By offer you of course mean ran his mouth.....

That is not the same as sitting down reasonably and negotiating a fight. Anyone can call someone else out, then demand terms which are totally unreasonable, it's not like they actually made an offer to Hatton, Floyd just ran his mouth is all.

Hatton said in an interview that, when asked about fighting Floyd, that they turned him down twice in 2005 because Ricky did not feel he was ready and wanted a couple tuneups first. It's not speculation when it comes from the man's mouth.

And oh someone else said on another site, its gonna be Hatton-Harris in Boston.

Well thinking about it, with Hatton as WBA champion it certainly opens the Welterweight division up in terms of matchmaking. Whether he will carry the size to maintain his style effectively is another question but I suspect so.

If all goes expected (and Hatton is indeed getting this fight) then the 4 champions would be Hatton, Gatti, Margarito and Mayweather. Although Gatti is the weakest having him as a champion isnt a bad thing as hes the most marketable and would sell a card having Hatton-Gatti and Margarito-Mayweahter.

Then next year it sets up perfectly a megafight between the winners, hopefully Hatton and Mayweather.

In conclusion short term this fight looks poor but in the long term it opens up probably better possibilities than staying at Light-Welter.

TBA wrote:Well thinking about it, with Hatton as WBA champion it certainly opens the Welterweight division up in terms of matchmaking. Whether he will carry the size to maintain his style effectively is another question but I suspect so.

If all goes expected (and Hatton is indeed getting this fight) then the 4 champions would be Hatton, Gatti, Margarito and Mayweather. Although Gatti is the weakest having him as a champion isnt a bad thing as hes the most marketable and would sell a card having Hatton-Gatti and Margarito-Mayweahter.

Then next year it sets up perfectly a megafight between the winners, hopefully Hatton and Mayweather.

In conclusion short term this fight looks poor but in the long term it opens up probably better possibilities than staying at Light-Welter.

Mayweather has been criticised for continually avoiding any mention of Margarito thus far - I wouldn't hold out too much hope of that fight being in the pipeline..

jamesmcdonnell wrote:Someone must have sold their soul to get Collazo a title shot in the first place, his record is terrible, he has beaten absolutely nobody of any note whatsoever.

Not knocking Fight Academy, they probably needed a title on the line to get HBO interested, presuming this is being shown on HBO, but Collazo's record suggests he was never destined to be champ for long.

Never seen Colazo fight but stopping Miguel Angel Gonzalez who took Spinks 12 and gave ODLH and Tyuzu decent fights isn't too bad.

Supposedly Colazos a tricky southpaw, at 5'9 with a 72inch reach (about the same as Maussa and probably has better skills) and a natural welter maybe he could be a bit tricky for ricky.