By Mark Vester
Everyone from close friends to past opponents have called for Ricky Hatton to retire. He was going to give a decision this week but told reporters that he needed more time to get his thoughts in order. Hatton suffered a crushing two round knockout at the hands of Manny Pacquiao on May 2.
Hatton seems to be torn between his choices of sticking around and putting himself back in position to take another violent loss.
"What more do I need to do? I lost two fights to the pound for pound bests – four world titles, two weight divisions – do I need to do anything, do I need to put my family and loved ones through it again?" Hatton said. "I don't want to spend anytime in a boxing ring, not until I get back to some sort of normality."
"I don't know how I'm going to feel yet, I haven't had time to come to terms with it. I need to get back to normality. I'm still smarting so I don't know anything about it at the moment, sooner or later I'm going to face up to it."
Hatton has not watched his loss to Pacquiao, but gave a lot of praise to the Filipino fighter.
"If I do [watch it] it certainly won't be the week after, that is common sense," he said. "I know what happened, he practically hit me with the first punch he caught me with. What if he hadn't caught me so early maybe you think it might be different – [it is all] ifs and buts and fucking whys, at the end of the day. Some fighters never get the chance to fight for the pound-for-pound title. You have to give credit to Manny Pacquiao at the end of the day, you can pull all the excuses out of the air but it was a fantastic performance."
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