Ricky Hatton has had his say on Logan Paul vs Floyd Mayweather. Box populi
We don’t hear too much from Ricky Hatton MBE since he retired in 2011 but, just like with his punches, the straight-talking Stopfordian doesn’t usually hold back when he pipes up.
In a post uploaded to Instagram, ‘The Hitman’ summed up the Logan Paul vs Floyd Mayweather fight perfectly by starting off with, simply: “WTF was all this about?”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CP0OHa9AiI-/?utm_medium=copy_link
As you can see, he went on to mourn “the days where fighters would put [their] lives on the line to try be the best and at least fight the best” – clearly a dig at the fact that ‘Money’ Mayweather would even entertain giving the celebrity the time of day, let alone come out of retirement for this is ‘special exhibition’.
Hatton fought Mayweather back in 2007, the pair both boasting an unbeaten record at the time, so he certainly knows a thing or two about going toe-to-toe with the best. At the height of his career, he was the pride of Manchester and UK sport as a whole, with more than 30,000 British fans descending on Las Vegas for the fight more than a decade ago.
He goes on to say that while he “can live with an exhibition like [Mike Tyson and Roy Jones] did between two legends of our sport” but seeing “the greatest fighter of all time who has only recently retired” fight against someone simply because of “how many followers he has” is something he can’t get behind.
While he accepts that “money is important” and that it is how amateurs turn pro in the first place, he argued that “these days money seems more important than the legacy.” Well said, Ricky.
He closed out the statement by writing “good luck to both”, before concluding: “My personal opinion that was shit for boxing.”
For the record, we would like to go on and second that statement and add that is simply not boxing – not the sport as we know and love it, anyway.
