Hatton: My money is on Fury to defeat AJ

By Ray Wheatley – World of Boxing

Former world light welterweight and welterweight champion Ricky Hatton is backing Tyson Fury to defeat Anthony Joshua when they clash for the unified heavyweight championship.

“It will be a very close fight. We are very fortunate to see Tyson at close quarters in my gym and I think he (Fury) is on a different level,” Hatton told Daily Mail. “I think with his boxing IQ, he can fight on the inside as he did in his last fight or he can box from a distance. He has got movement, the hand speed, the jab, the defense and I think his last fight showed he has got the talent.

“I think he has too much in his arsenal for AJ. Yes, AJ has the punching power to hurt him and knock him out but whether he gets him is another thing. If you are asking me where my money is going, I’d have to say Tyson Fury.”

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  • Like I say, one step at a time! Let’s see what is being done about Whyte and his mandatory match up. Hatton at one time was an entertaining fighter. Boy, he slid down hill very fast as a fighter once Mayweather and Manny put him in his place. I recall when Hatton would call himself “Fatton” at one time since he gorged on food outside of training for match ups. One of his favorite spots to eat was Burger King as he said once in an interview.

    • Everyone goes downhill after they lose to 2 of the greatest fighters in the last generation of the sport. He gave Mayweather hell until he got caught – Manny’s KO was one of the best you’ll ever see. Bloke was a working class blood and guts warrior. Without him the sport is full of robots reading off scripts like AJ.

      • I was at Mayweather/Hatton fight Mayweather kicked his ass and dropped and stopped him with a body shot.

        • Body shot eh? must have been the mayweather Hatton X box fight. Floyd koed him with a check left hook. I was in his corner that night. We haven’t spoke since he fell out with 50 cent. Me and 50 are like brothers.

          • Niki, you are correct. The left check hook was the KO punch. If my memory serves me correctly, Hatton bounced off the ring corner once the hook connected and left him delirious. I am going by memory since I did not look up the fight again via You Tube.

    • Styles make fights and Wallin shocked us all, will be a threat to any champion.

    • You don’t believe that. Fury ALMOST lost. Joshua DID lose. His chin in glass and Fury will shatter it if he shows up aggressively like he did against Wilder.

    • Joshua is the guy that got knocked out by the morbidly obese bloke? Did Joshua fight Wallen? Trying to understand your form analysis- who would win the Undertaker or Mike Tyson? I like Tyson’s stand up game- if they fight boxing rules i think Tyson wins.

  • At this point, I am concerned about AJ’s mental toughness. AJ was mentally skittish in his fights against Ruiz because a shorter Ruiz applied good ring pressure with an unorthodox style. I am pretty sure Fury’s unorthodox style, size, ring pressure and confidence may also create mental pressure on AJ. AJ is mentally at his best when an opponent presents a clean, orthodox boxing style, but Fury is no where near that style.

    Unless Fury has negative influences outside the ring, I believe Fury’s confidence, size, combination punching, ring pressure and unorthodox boxing style will cause AJ’s mental decline/AJ’s defeat.

  • Styles make fights and I’m very interested in seeing how this one plays out.

  • Fury is gonna blast that racist POS out of the ring. Joshua doesn’t stand a chance against The Gypsy King. Joshua is to slow and boring. He is like a new version of Frank Bruno. Big and strong? Yes. But this is not a strong man competition or Mr Universe. This is boxing and in the heavyweight division, there is nobody who can match Fury. Fury already beat two of the biggest punchers since George Foreman. If he stays mentaly stabil and hungry, Fury retires undefeated

    • “Racist?” You can’t be talking about Wilder because he and Fury highly respect each other. Joshua as much as I’m not a fan is above that. Fury is definitely not racist because he spoke out against police brutality against black folks years before it became cool. The commonality of the racists individuals that I’ve encountered is their inability to spell. Check your last sentence.

      • So I’m a racist because I made a spelling error!?? Are you for real dude?? Well I sure am sorry that I did that. English is not My first language. I speak and understand 6 languages. How many do you speak Einstein? But actually I meant Joshua. His comments after the George Floyd hoax proves that. Plus he has previously said that the black race is superior. If that’s not racist, I don’t know what is. But Wilder is racist as well. Check out his stupid a** music before the last Wilder – Fury fight and some of his victim comments in the past. Listen, God made us all equal of One blood. All races have had and have been slaves at one point in time. When do people stop feeling like a victim because of their grandfathers hardship? I say, dry your eyes and move along. This world is not divided because of race. It’s divided because the elite keep us divided. Jesus is The Way and the truth ✝️ Just like Tyson Fury believes..

      • I don’t know if it makes him a racist (by today’s silly standards it does) but before the second Fury fight Wilder said “I’m going to make him the answer to a black history month question” and he also talks about “black and strong” and black and pretty. Not that big of a deal but it would be if a white guy said something like that.

  • I suspect fury will win but don’t sleep on Joshua. Good fight I hope. Joshua is much better at moving and putting his punches together than wilder.

  • Fury wins this fight. His confidence is sky high. Joshua confidence cant be there. No way. How can you have any confidence when you got blown out by Ruiz. Ruiz is definitely don’t judge a book by its cover type fighter but he is not an elite fighter. Embarrassing loss.Look at the best heavyweights Fury,Joshua,Wilder. All 3 look very clumsy,spastic when fighting. Ali,Holmes,Holyfield,Tyson era’s much more skilled than what we see today. Moving on Fury beats Joshua mentally n physically easily. Put it this way Fury would be in shock if he lost n Joshua would not. That’s the confidence difference.
    Easy fight to predict!

    • I disagree about Holmes etc. Those guys were 40 lbs lighter and 6 or so inches shorter so of course they would look faster but they weren’t near as strong. By that logic you could say the light heavyweights of today move a lot better than Holmes etc. Keep in mind that Ali lost a couple times in his own era. Surely then there are people in other eras that might have beat him. No man is a god. They all have 2 arms and 2 legs. Ali and Cosell called Ali the greatest but that doesn’t make it so.

  • Joshua is in a good place right now. The pressure is on Fury because people think he should beat Joshua easily. I am a Joshua fan and I just love that. Joshua’s resumé speaks for itself he produced a phenomenal performance against Klitschko compared to Fury after which he took care of Povetkin(one of the best), Whyte(One of the best), Parker(One of the best). So tell me, apart from the Wilder win, who has Fury beaten. NO ONE, ZILCH. Boxing experts know that a loss to Ruiz is no shame, he is a damn good boxer many notches above Otto Wallin and Cunningham who almost kayoed Fury. Ruiz actually did enough to win against Parker so he should have been World champion before he even met Joshua. Fury has has one big win against Wilder so he cannot be legitimately considered the best. Mark my words, he will not have the longevity of Lennox Lewis. Back to Hatton, well watch how he predicted Gorman’s win over Dubois. This fight will be very similar to Gorman versus Dubois, Joshua is capable of stopping him.

    • Fury beat no one? What about Klitschko? Like him or not Klits has pretty impressive stats (read Wikipedia). A lot of who people beat and get credit for is because how much hype and fame that person has. I suspect a lot of people have never truly evaluated the skills of people thru history back to back on video while looking at their knowledge and physical blessings and also most people don’t have the knowledge to truly evaluate it. Take the era of Ali. In his day there were not hundreds of champions and several champs in most weight classes and no ppv. The average housewife that wasn’t interested knew some of the champs’ names and who their opponents were and I think that led to people having a “they were better then than the no-names now”. They are “no-names” because of the situation now but they are still the people that are in the world rankings.

    • Kilt was beaten while in his Prime by Fury – AJ took him on well past his sell by date.

      Povetkin(one of the best), That’s a big call.

      Whyte(One of the best), barely got past Chisora who Fury beat in 1st gear while Chisora was in his peak.

      Parker(One of the best). A Fury Sparring Partner?

  • I’ve got one to say, Hatton was cheated badly when he fought Mayweather thanks to Mayweathers friend Cortez who kept Hatton from landing his lethal body punches all night long.

    • I don’t remember it real well but I do remember griping about the ref to my friend when we watched that. A ref can really be a factor in a fight. I watched the Ali-Frazier fights the other night and if Frazier would have had a ref that took points for holding it might have been different. Ali did what a lot of guys do that are scared to fight on the inside. He would jab once or twice and either hold or throw a right and then hold, sometimes nearly 20 times a round. I was thinking that if I was advising Tyson when he fought or if he fought again I would tell him to do whatever he had to, even take less money, to get a ref that doesn’t allow holding and believes in taking points after the 3rd or 4th time each round.

      • Refs can make such a big difference, agree 100%. Seen so many fights, like Ali-Frazier you mention, where I wish the amateur rules could be enforced more to make it more of a clean boxing match. And boxers getting away with hitting behind the head I dislike the most in pro boxing.

        • The amateur boxing was over, when Roy Jones Jr. lost in Seul olympiad final. And now it is a nightmare to watch, huge gloves, boxing helmets and much bigger corruption then in pro-boxing. I watched all finals in Rio and at least two fights were fixed.

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