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Mayweather flattens Hatton to keep welterweight boxing crown
9 hours ago

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AFP) ― Floyd Mayweather stopped England's Ricky Hatton in the 10th round to win a brawling showdown of unbeaten fighters here Saturday, keeping the World Boxing Council welterweight crown.

Mayweather knocked Hatton down with a damaging left to the chin as the British fighter was swinging a punch of his own. Hatton rose but the American star followed with a hammering left hook and a dazed Hatton fell moments later.

"I threw a hook and he walked right into it. He never saw it coming," Mayweather said. "I wanted to show the fans I could punch with power."

Mayweather improved to 39-0 with his 25th victory inside the distance when referee Joe Cortez halted a bout filled with clinching and bumping at 1:35 of the 10th round.

"I already knew coming into the ring it was going to be tough, that he was going to try to rough me up," Mayweather said. "I took my time. I fought on the inside and the outside. A true champion can adapt to anything."

Hatton suffered his first defeat after 43 triumphs but earned respect for a gutty effort.

"He was definitely the toughest competitor I've ever faced," Mayweather said. "I threw a lot of body shots, and he still kept coming. I can see why they call him the 'Hitman'."

Cortez deducted a point from Hatton for hitting Mayweather behind the head in round six. All three judges would have scored the round even otherwise.

"I was doing fine until I lost that point," Hatton said. "I thought then I had better put the foot down and I left myself open."

Hatton knew he was trailing on points and pressed harder than he wanted in later rounds, leaving himself open to Mayweather in the 10th.

"I thought I was doing well in the fight until then," Hatton said. "When I went down I felt more like a mug for leaving myself open like that.

"I had success. I was really there. I gave him the chance and he took it."

The end came moments after the final blow with Hatton flat on his back by the ropes as Mayweather jumped for joy to celebrate victory.

"I'll be back. Don't worry," Hatton said. "I'm sorry everybody."

Hatton's punches in the sixth left Mayweather doubled over the middle rope, his head and chest outside the ring.

After the deduction, an already-bloodied Hatton responded by turning his rear to Cortez and Mayweather and bending over. When the fighting resumed, Hatton battled back, forcing an up-close and against the ropes fight.

"I didn't quite stick to my game plan," Hatton said. "He's not the biggest welterweight I've ever fought, but he was strong. I don't think he was the hardest puncher here, but he was a lot cleverer than I thought."

Mayweather slammed a devastating right punch that snapped back Hatton's head one minute into the eighth round and landed a flurry late in the ninth.

While the gutty Englishman battled back both times, he was clearly tiring and the end was near.

"I felt really strong," Hatton said. "I left myself open and he's better inside than I thought he was, using all of his elbows, shoulders and forearms."

Hatton had staggered Mayweather with a hard left in a furious first round and pressed the attack in the second, cornering the champion time and again.

Mayweather answered with a straight right to the head and the fighters clinched time and again, prompting Cortez to twice halt the round to caution them about grappling and improper punches.

Mayweather opened a cut above Hatton's right eye in the third round with a powerful right and followed with two punishing rights in a fourth-round flurry, inflicting a toll on Hatton's head and body.

Hatton's popularity as an aggressive fighter and fun-loving pub personality helped draw thousands of vocal British supporters to the US gambling mecca for the biggest fight of his career.

They cheered locker-room video of Hatton, booed Mayweather lustily and began several rounds of singing "Hatton Wonderland" with 1 1/2 undercard fights to go before their man entered the ring - a replay of Friday's rowdy weigh-in mood.

"UK fans, you guys are unreal," Mayweather said.

Hatton supporters sang along with "God Save the Queen" before the bout, but booed throughout the singing of the US anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".

"I'm disappointed by that," Hatton said.
Boxing delivers cruel fate for Paul Ingle
By James Mossop
Last Updated: 1:06am GMT 09/12/2007Page 1 of 3


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Far away from the neon kitsch, cascading slot machines and ￡60 million boxing matches of Las Vegas, there is a dark side to the old fight game.

Hatton standing on brink of greatness
Telegraph Talk: Ricky Hatton's fitness guru on how the fighter is at his peak
Paul Ingle was a bright young Yorkshireman being prepared for the Nevada stage that was occupied by Ricky Hatton in the early hours of this morning.


Happy times: Paul Ingle shows off his IBF Flyweight belt in 1999
Ingle was a 9st featherweight blessed with speed and imagination. His fists, they said, were as fast as a cobra's tongue. Today, seven years after his last fight, he weighs 17st, lives with his mother in Scarborough, cannot work, cannot drive and relies on ￡56-a-week disability pension. His fiancee left him as they tried to cope with injuries inflicted in the ring.

He had fought and won at the most famous boxing arena of all, Madison Square Garden, New York, and emerged as the International Boxing Federation's world champion.

Eight months later, on Dec 16, 2000, he danced into the ring in Sheffield to defend his title against Mbulelo Botile, a hard little South African from a township called Duncan Village. Ingle left that ring on a stretcher.

Within the hour surgeons were working to remove a blood clot from his brain. He was in intensive care for four weeks and had a secondary operation, a tracheotomy, to help his breathing.

His mother, Carol, could never bear to watch him fight. She was driven to the hospital, a journey she would repeat every day for six weeks: "They told me it was touch and go. We were prepared for the worst. I called that journey from Scarborough to the hospital in Sheffield, the road to hell."

For Hatton and those other British stars, Joe Calzaghe and Amir Khan, the show goes on. Their bank balances grow by the moment. Hatton's fight should bring home at least ￡10 million.

Ingle, now 35, has difficulties with his balance. There is partial blindness in his left eye and his speech is slow, unlike the rushing but modest patter of his late twenties.

He once said famously in his Yorkshire way: "Who needs Lamborghinis and Ferraris when you've got two whippets and a ferret?"

He never aspired to own fancy, expensive cars. The call of the hills and dales and going rabbiting with brother Dean represented the joy of life outside the ring. Now one small dog, a Lakeland terrier called Annie, takes him for a walk, tugging him along old familiar paths.

Sitting at home in his unpretentious semi-detached house with a Christmas tree twinkling in the window and his four championship belts in a glass case, he talked sombrely.

In his halting way, he said: "I just miss being involved. It was always good to see people now and again, going to fights and meeting new people. There's just a brick wall now and I can't get over it. I still love boxing. It was my life. I was hard to hit. I had good head movement. Sometimes it's hard not to feel sorry for myself. I just think, 'Why am I not fighting? Why me?' I gave it 110 per cent. I wanted just a couple more fights and then I would have retired. "My mother is 100 per cent, she's No 1. If I get fed up she lifts me out of it all the time. I was always living life at 100 miles an hour, doing stuff for myself and helping everybody else. Now I can't do a thing. It does my head in.

"When I see what's going on with Hatton and Khan and so on it frustrates me. All their doors are opening but mine is shut. Good luck to them. I just wish I had been treated half as well."

He remembers nothing of that fateful night in the Sheffield Arena but an evening last month wrenched his emotions. A benefit dinner had been organised to help him raise around