Corrales-Castillo I has become the gold standard of boxing. Ricky Hatton hopes on Saturday he and Jose Luis Castillo can measure up.
?Castillo?s fight against Diego Corrales was one of the fights of the century,? Hatton said during a recent conference call, not needing to say which Castillo-Corrales fight he was referring to. ?And if anyone?s styles could even beat that one, you?d have to say my style, and Jose Luis Castillo?s style would.?
The wild brawling, hard throwing English fighter, Hatton, against the left hook thumping, in your face, never been dropped Mexican, Castillo. Hatton could be right. And a lot of people who care about the sweet science hope he is right, too.
These two fighters will be appearing in the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas for Hatton?s Ring 140 pound title on Saturday night.
For Hatton now it isn?t about winning fights. After all he is 28 years old, and 42-0 with 30 knockouts. He has little more to prove to get to the top. He is at the top. He has defeated Tony Pep, Freddie Pendleton, Joe Hutchinson, Ben Tackie, Michael Stewart, and Ray Oliveira on his way up to his fight with Kostya Tszyu and onto the pound per pound lists. Now, it?s about winning fights impressively.
?I don?t want to be remembered as the greatest of all time, but in years to come when people look at Ricky Hatton, I want them to say ?by God, he could fight,?? he says.
And his opponent on Saturday will probably answer that question. Yes, Hatton can fight, but can he FIGHT?
Since his surprise knockout of Tszyu in 2005, a fight that earned him the 2005 Fighter of the Year award from Ring magazine, Hatton has defended his light welterweight title twice and moved up to welterweight for one match and has come up with three victories but mixed results. It could be that after that high against Tszyu in Manchester, England he has lost a step or two. But Hatton disagrees.
?I feel like there are a couple of performances, even though the achievements have been great, the performances could have been a little bit better, but there have been reasons about that, a couple of southpaws, you know, fighting in a weight division against Collazo that I never wanted to be in the first place.?
Funny. Before that fight he called the move to welterweight, ?logical.?
And that may be the point. Hatton is no Archie Moore or Bernard Hopkins, outthinking his opponent and using the logic of the sweet science to take advantage of mistakes. He follows the philosophy of Jack Dempsey, an illogic of brawling.
What he did just over two years ago defied logic. That night Hatton bullied Tszyu, forcing him to the ropes, using his fists, elbows, head, whatever he could to hit the champion with only one loss on his record. The referee allowed the roughhouse tactics and Tszyu couldn?t adjust to them. Instead, Tszyu didn?t just quit the fight after the eleventh round; he quit boxing, not even seeking a rematch for a fight that was still relatively close on the score cards when he threw in the towel. That night, logic didn?t do it for Hatton. Hatton is not a philosopher of the jab. He?s got to get in there and bull and bully and push the matador to the mat to not only win but look good doing it.
Since then, Hatton has come up with wins but has come up short on entertainment.
In his following fight, cut on both eyes, Hatton stopped Carlos Maussa, a fighter who won his WBA title with an upset over Vivian Harris. Although KOing the Columbian in the ninth, Hatton didn?t look good doing it.
Next he headed on over to the USA and fought a pair of south paws. First Luis Collazo for the WBA welterweight title and then Juan Urango for The Ring light welterweight title. In the first match, Collazo was making the second defense of his title, but bad luck befell him. Hatton hit him with a left hook to put him down although the knockdown looked like a loss of balance to many. Maybe it was deemed a knockdown because it was the day of the Floyd Patterson memorial, a tribute to that famous left hooker. Anyway, that knockdown may have been the difference on the scorecards as Hatton eked out a disputed decision.
Next up was a retreat back to junior welterweight. He took on Juan Urango from Columbia, who was making his first defense of Hatton?s old IBF light welterweight title. In a fight that was exciting for a few rounds until Hatton chose to dance the final half of the fight, Hatton won a near shutout but pleased few who watched the bout. In the co-feature that night, Jose Luis Castillo barely beat Herman Ngoujdo. After that night in January, those two victors were limping along toward a collision course.
Despite the action fight looming, the last three Hatton fights have made many wonder whether he has lost a little something. Hatton seemed to rely on boxing to get through his fight with Urango rather than the brawling style he is known for. He seemed to be playing it safe, waiting for the big money fight with Castillo rather than taking a chance.
Many boxers with the big money coming up on the horizon decide it?s not worth putting on a show in the here and now for the fans that have paid the money. They would rather look bad and get the win but lose the fans and get the money. Hatton has never been this fighter, but a poor showing against Castillo on Saturday may have people saying different.
A risk taker, a guy defying conventional wisdom to get the job done. That is what Hatton says he still is. Cut from the mold, albeit a smaller one, of the young Tyson, of Jack Dempsey, and of Joe Frazier, Hatton uses footwork to get inside and uses his fast hands to beat down opponents. His style of fighting is made for risk. He cites his last two fights as risky ones in form if not in substance.
?If you look up my fight with Collazo, you look at my fight against Carlos Maussa when I was cut twice, look at my fight against Kostya Tszyu, I think I?m the epitome of the risk taker.?
This time, though, he is motivated, up against a fighter that suits his ring temperament and unlike his recent opponents has been in a fight of the year already. And as we know from fight of the year winners, they have a habit of winning that title more than once.
?Collazo is a big southpaw. And, you know, Urango, southpaw again. This is more my kind of fight, I think, with Castillo. Castillo, I think it will be a similar fight to the Tszyu fight. Castillo holds his ground a little more.?
Until Saturday, all we can do is wait and see and measure these two fighters up against each other, something Hatton is more than willing to do.
?Castillo?s been fighting at lightweight the majority of his career, and I?ve won a world title at welterweight. So, you know, I think our opponents are comparable. I beat Kostya Tszyu. He was arguably the best pound per pound fighter in the world at the time.?
He continues, comparing this pound per pound victory to Castillo?s losses to the man many think is the pound per pound king, Floyd Mayweather.
?I fought one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world in Kostya Tszyu and I beat him, where he got beat by his pound per pound counterpart.?
But the boxing world is not so much the past but the present. It?s about what have you done for me lately; it?s about your most recent video highlights on YouTube. So, for now, for Hatton and Castillo, it?s about Hatton?s Urango fight and Castillo?s poor showing against Herman Ngoudjo. And about whether Castillo has much left in the tank. And whether Hatton has much left.
But it may not be what they have left but the temperament they bring to the fight that?ll decide it. Hatton has found being ?logical? doesn?t work for him: moving up to the weight his body wants him to be at doesn?t work; and dodging and ducking and jabbing and pecking as he did against Urango, the logic of the boxer, doesn?t work for him either. What works for him is the illogic of the brawler, the fighter who will take as many punches as he needs to knock the guy in front of him out. This, as the histories of Tyson, Dempsey, and Frazier show, is not a lasting style but an entertaining one.
These may not be two fighters at the top of their game, as Corrales and Castillo were that night in 2005, the year Hatton beat Tszyu. Rather, they may be two fighters nearing the end but still with plenty of skills, like two junior welterweights who met not too long ago, Gatti and Ward, two fighters who had been through wars before and went through them with each other again — and again.
?Again? — it is a word Hatton doesn?t mind using when talking about Castillo.
?You know, he?s been through the Corrales fight, and I think he?s going to have to do it again in order to beat Ricky Hatton on Saturday.?
He said it: ?Again.? Let?s hope Hatton?s right and Castillo does do it again. Because a new version of Gatti-Ward or Castillo-Corrales, but this time featuring Ricky Hatton, whether as winner or loser, will be, for him and for boxing both, a gain.
