Well, I must say that the Ricky Hatton vs. Paulie Malignaggi fight went largely as I predicted in my post several days ago. The only thing that messed it up some was that Buddy McGirt took it into his own hands to throw in the towel and end the fight for his game fighter in the 11th round.

After Malignaggi came out in the first round of the fight and won the round, it looked as though he may be able to edge out a hard fought decision. But as I predicted, Malignaggi had nothing to keep the Hitman off of him, and Hatton waded in and started throwing hooks and huge right hands. Some of those caught and hurt Paulie in the following rounds, and soon Hatton began to take control of the bout.

The first round aside, Malignaggi likely didn't win a round the rest of the fight. And with his low KO percentage, there was almost a zero percent chance that he would come back and win the fight. That being said, I do not agree with the stoppage of the bout. I understand that Buddy McGirt, a formerly great fighter, empathizes with his fighters and doesn't want to see them hurt. However - and as Paulie said in the post fight interview - he got it much worse from Miguel Cotto without quitting, and should have been allowed to finish the fight.

I'm all for protecting the fighters, and truly that is one of the most important and perhaps most overlooked elements of the boxing world. However, Hatton wasn't unleashing a devastating barage of shots, beating Paulie to a pulp. He was grinding him down and getting effective blows him, but I don't feel like Malignaggi was in any danger of injury. And while you sometimes stop a fight to save a fighter's ego and confidence level, I feel in the long run this hurts Paulie, as you could visibly see how distraught he was with the result and the perception of his performance.

You can't take anything away from Ricky Hatton though. Did he work his way into the top 10 pound for pound fighters again? Well, probably not, although you never know. He won a fight he was expected to win, although many people picked against him. It does seem that he is on the end of his rope though, and there's only so much more his body could take. I guess we will soon see who his next opponent is, although to be perfectly honest, I care not to see him against either Oscar De La Hoya nor Manny Pacquiao.