Please No Hugging Ricky Hatton
By James Blears
The upcoming June 23 clash between Ricky Hatton and Jose Luis Castillo has the potential to be one of the most memorable fights of modern times, but only if Ricky resists the urge to hug, when he gets tagged.
The Ricky who demolished the great Kostya Tszyu in 2005, mauled him like a lion. There were no bear hugs - a disappointing feature of Ricky’s boxing, which has since come to the fore.
In that fight, the close range action was unrelentingly breathtaking, and the tempo was truely amazing. The great hope is that Ricky is capable of producing another such performance to match or surpass it, this time around.
The real question mark is about how his weight loss has been properly managed, and just how will affect him, as the going get tougher, and it will! Puffing up to almost 180 pounds between fights shows a singular lack of lifestyle discipline. Losing all of that weight to reach the required limit does not bode well for his longevity in the most unforgiving of sports. At the scales before his last several fights, he’s appeared gaunt.
Yet paradoxically Jose Luis also has his own weight related problems. The residue of that whopping fine from the Nevada State Athletic Commission, for not making the weight against the late great Diego Corrales, is still bearing down on him, and he must pay the balance after this fight.
Was that the reason he’s restricted himself to training in Tijuana? For previous big fights, he’s always opted for either the bleak Otomi High Altitude Center, perched in the mountains high above Toluca, or nearby Temoya, which is only a little lower in the cloud line. This boosted his red blood cell count and gave him the energy pep that a number of top Mexican fighters use. It provides them with the opportunity to physically switch to a reserve energy tank, in the late stages of fights.
To my mind, this is a significant loss of advantage. However, Jose Luis’ wily trainer Romulo Quirarate, has been conditioning him for well over two months for this last gasp career opportunity, with plenty of rugged sparring to sharpen him for the war ahead.
Even though he’s fought in a lower weight division, Jose Luis is at least a couple of inches taller than Ricky and outreaches him by three inches.
No one who’s been the chief sparring partner of the great Julio Cesar Chavez, is going to be intimidated by anyone ever again, and the quality of Jose Luis’ opponents far surpasses Ricky’s.
He’s outfought Stevie Johnston, iced Cesar Bazan, given Floyd Mayweather Jr the hardest fight of his career, overcome Joel Casamayor, and then of course there was that mega fight for the ages against Chico Corrales.
Jose Luis has more than earned his nickname: El Temible. It means scary one! It was given to him by a journalist in the early part of his career, when opponents avoided getting into the ring with him, and those that did, were unable to duck. Many people confuse it with nickname with El Terrible, which belongs to Erik Morales.’ That’s a tifle monocular!
Ricky has never fought against an opponent with some much kerbstone toughness and determination to walk through pain and sacrifice to win, even though he’s not short of his own steely determination.
The WBC ranks Jose Luis the number one contender to Junior Witter’s junior welterweight title. But that fight will only happen if he defeats Ricky Hatton.
Although Ricky fans are bound to flood across the Atlantic in droves, fighting in Las Vegas, away from the comfort zone of home town is another factor to consider.
In hard fights Ricky’s face has also taken a fearful bruising with lumps and bumps appearing everywhere. Whatever the outcome on June 23rd, Ricky’s features are going to display a vivid rainbow tapestry of Jose Luis’s artistry. Ricky will have to dig deeper than ever before to go for victory, especially if the fight goes past the halfway mark.
Although Jose Luis is supposedly the betting underdog for this fight, a number of varied unofficial surveys and straw polls actually predict he’ll KO Ricky.
How much has Jose Luis got left after a long career, so many amazing yet hard fights and that incredible war against Chico- the most valiant of ring foes? We’re soon going to see!
The hope is that this match up of styles, lives up to all it’s amazing potential. So far the hype and promotion has been amateurish unheralded, stilted and heavily one sided. But wasn’t that the case before the first Jose Luis and Chico fight?