By Mark Vester
In a recent interview with the Manchester Evening News, British boxing legend Henry Cooper feels that current WBA welterweight champion Ricky Hatton is already a legend in his counrty, and because of that he should fight two more times and retire.
"If I had anything to do with Ricky, I would tell him to have two more fights and call it a day, but I hear he is planning five or six, as he wants to fight all the top guys in the world. But you only have to look at Ricky's face to realise he is not a ballroom dancer. When you fight like he does, prepared to take two punches in order to land your one, you only have so many fights in you. That is why I feel he should go for two more, at the most, make a couple of million quid from each and then enjoy the rest of his life," Cooper said.
The feeling from Cooper is that the win over Tszyu has already stamped the legacy of Hatton, and if he continues to fight he will eventually get beaten and possibly hurt. Cooper is also well aware of how Hatton struggles to make weight for his fights, and says that a fighter is never the same if he continues to keep stuggling to make weight for every fight.
"If he goes on to try to fight all the guys out there, sooner or later he will get beaten, and possibly even hurt. He will already go down in history for what he has achieved, winning world titles and beating Tszyu. You only have to look at Barry McGuigan, who was a similar fighter to Ricky, and in his last two or three fights he was talking punches and going down momentarily, things that hadn't happened to him before. What people don't realise is that every time a guy makes the weight for a fight, he leaves something behind, something he can never get back."
