By Keith Idec

Charles Hatley never should’ve been in position to suffer the lone loss of his professional boxing career.

Then again, Hatley has no one to blame but himself for that mistake because he insisted on fighting Lanardo Tyner when he should’ve spent more time rehabilitating his surgically repaired knee. Dallas’ Hatley had surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee just two months before he fought Tyner in August 2012.

Tyner halted a four-fight losing streak by stopping Hatley, a decorated amateur, in the first round of their scheduled 10-round fight at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas. Hatley also fought Tyner (32-10-2, 20 KOs, 2 NC) at the welterweight limit of 147 pounds, despite that he mostly had competed at junior middleweight and middleweight in his first 18 professional fights.

Tyner dropped Hatley twice and hurt him a third time before referee Laurence Cole stopped their fight 1:44 into it.

Hatley has chalked up that loss and the decision to take a fight he should’ve skipped to learning experiences that have made him better appreciate his long-awaited world title shot Saturday night in Brooklyn. The 31-year-old Hatley (26-1-1, 18 KOs) will challenge Houston’s Jermell Charlo (28-0, 13 KOs) for the WBC world super welterweight title in the opener of a “Showtime Championship Boxing” doubleheader from Barclays Center (9:30 p.m. ET/6:30 p.m. PT).

“The weight played a big part of it, but I was actually injured,” Hatley said during a recent conference call regarding his loss to Tyner. “I shouldn’t have even fought. I had just come off from ACL surgery two months before the fight, and the doctor told me not to fight for a whole year. But I knew he was trash, a bum, and he wasn’t on my level. So I couldn’t wait to fight, you know, so I told my dad, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ And that’s what happens when you think you know everything. You know, accidents happen.”

Hatley tried to arrange a rematch with Tyner once he was healthy, but it never happened.

While Hatley has won nine straight fights since Houston’s Tyner beat him, the 41-year-old Tyner is 2-2 in his past four fights. Back-to-back no-contests preceded that stretch, one which was partially the result of Tyner’s failed drug test.

“I actually tried to fight him several times afterwards,” Hatley said. “I told my dad I wasn’t fighting again until I fought him [in a rematch]. And he didn’t wanna fight.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.