QUEEN OF CONTROVERSY IS BACK!
New York, NY– My, how the times have changed! It’s been about a year since my hiatus from boxing, and, much like an old star can morph from a red giant to a white dwarf, boxing has become a hotter, whiter, and much more condensed niche sport.
HAVING CLEARED THE AIR
The question of whether there are some impressive up-and-comers in the wings has taken a back seat to the celebrity worship of our biggest personalities. Finding a boxing news story that does not involve Manny Pacquiao (50-3-2, 38 KOs), for example, has become the quest for the Holy Grail. Of course this is to be expected in this era, where our greatest fighters have either aged gracefully, aged disgracefully, or never been the same since having their careers destroyed by egregious cheating. We cling to what we know because so much is unstable around the sport, and the nation. Boxers have been doing it, too. They cling to their own expired identities because they fear starting over— why else would Floyd Mayweather (40-0, 25 KOs) still be around? If he just wanted money, he could simply go the Roy Jones, Jr. (54-6, 40 KOs) way and release a rap record, or become a judge on American Idol. Many boxers who have attempted a return to obscurity quickly find they can only see by the limelight of day. Judging how others in much less honorable careers take the shift (that means you, Jon Gosselin), they seem to handle it pretty well, going back to what they do best. But the real question to a fan remains: “how does this benefit boxing?”
I doubt that was the first question Ricky Hatton (45-2, 32 KOs) asked himself when he decided to announce he was returning to the ring in the new decade, but it should have been. At the very least his publicists must have been aware of this when they released this statement from “Ricky”: “I’ve sat down and listened to the concerns of my close family and friends, and to my fans. I think I still have a lot to offer boxing, and after thinking long and hard over many soul searching months, I made the decision to return to the ring.” And now that he’s here, we might as well make the best of it. Looking back on his post-Kostya Tszyu (31-2, 25 KOs) career, Hatton spend much of his career as an ungraceful pest. He packed a heavy punch—and for this he deserved respect—but his style could best be described as bumbling and, really, before losing to Mayweather, he wasn’t taking many big risks. He made a name for himself as a power puncher with an ugly-looking strategy and a public personality to match. He was the anti-Paulie Malignaggi (25-3, 5 KOs), so to speak, which is what made that fight fun to watch and the Malignaggi defeat difficult to ingest. In the post-Tzsyu world, his existence was not really necessary.
“FIGHT CHICK” GOES DEEP
Fast-forward to 2009 and we must learn to be careful what we wish for. Much like how in 2009—the year where all previous conceptions of “worst” were shattered— political windbags like Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity were blown away by the paranoid, near-artistic McCarthyism of Glenn Beck, everything anyone every hated about Hatton was magnified to unprecedented proportions by the conclusive, undisputable ascent of Manny Pacquiao to the boxing throne. Everything Ricky can do, Manny can do better: the lack of strategy in the ring, the suspiciously hard punching, the inexplicable populism, the incoherent babbling that HBO gobbles up like pigeons flock to stale bread. Hatton is not now unnecessary, but, as we knew him, he is irrelevant. He is very much the Hannity to Pacquiao’s Beck, doing his old schtick for years and now completely overshadowed by an innovatively marketed peer. And how, precisely, does one compete with a man who sobs in a fetal position, boils frogs, and plays with Barbie dolls on live television? The same way one competes with a man who stars in superhero comedies and war dramas, runs for mayor of Manila, and releases soft rock album cuts in order to promote his boxing career, but that’s not much of an answer.
It is probably not a question Hatton expected to ever need to answer. Boxers tend to be, in general, extremely dedicated to their craft, so much so that the details around the actual boxing work get blurred on the edges. The nature of being a fighter is too intense to allow for anything else in a fighter’s life when they are at their peak, typically. This tends to hold even more so when a fighter is training to return when he has already left. The problem is that the peripheral work is what really makes a fighter a star. Pacquiao isn’t a multi-million-dollar draw because of all the time he invests in boxing, but because of all the time he invests in marketing himself as a boxer. This is not a criticism; Pacquiao is a savvy businessman and many fighters before him have attempted to make brands out of themselves while staying in the ring. The question is whether Hatton will be able to break into the currently tight-knit rat pack that controls the sport. He’s fighting for airtime against a deity (Pacquiao), a deity in his own mind (Mayweather), some Hollywood starlet’s boytoy (Wladimir Klitschko) and his brother, Ukraine’s Mayor (Vitali), and a Jersey Shore cast member (Paul Malignaggi). That’s a lot of celebrity to compete for elbow room with.
WHAT’S RICKY GOT LEFT?
But first we have to see whether Hatton is serious about this return, and whether he’ll be able to compete where it really matters: the ring. I, for one, am quite serious about my return, and as for the competition, well, how exactly do you compete with an opponent who plays with Barbie dolls?
Frances Martel