King J's Coverage of Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton Part 1: The Fight

Prior to the fight of the year, Manny Pacquiao stated that if God wanted him to lose, then he will lose and that it would be up to God to determine what happens in the fight.

Well I guess God wanted Manny to KTFO Hatton in round two, because that is exactly what happened. If you wanted a text book definition of the slang term "KTFO," it was provided for you in round two of last night's fight.

Live and direct from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, King J was there and reporting to all of you who were not able to make it to the fight of the year. Yes folks Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton lived up to the much hype and publicity that it has been receiving for the past several months. If you wanted an exciting match, this fight  exceeded excitement on all scales.

I really wondered how the Hatton fans were able to sneak in a whole marching band into the upper tier level seats and how is that allowed that they are able to play his music non-stop. Well, unfortunately for Hatton, not even his marching band could provide him enough inspiration for victory over the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

Look folks: I can write about nine pages about just on how devoted, passionate, and insane Hatton's die-hard fans were last night for those of you who were not actually at the MGM Grand. But I will just sum it up with one man I saw who was literally handing out fliers and mocking what some may call a "Jesus Freak" by saying, "Have you accepted Ricky Hatton into your life?" What's scary was I do not think he was joking.

Now what I did not like and what I thought was disrespectful to Hatton was the fact that they had him enter into the ring first. As we all know, traditionally the champion whose belts are on the line always enters the ring second after the challenger, but last night they had Hatton walk into the ring first.  This reminded me of when the same disrespectful act happened to Larry Holmes when he fought Cooney.

I sat behind an older white man who was American wearing a Hatton shirt, but who was ironically getting into fights with any Brit who was cheering for Hatton, screaming, "Manny will f*cking kill Hatton, so shut up or I'll kick your ass!" Well sir, why are you wearing a Hatton shirt then if you are ready to knock out any Brit cheering for Hatton? Maybe that's his ritual jinx? He wears the shirt of the fighter that he wants to lose? Very confusing.

The British man I sat next to looked like one of the guys from the HBO show Flight of the Conchords.  He was with a hot British girl, but kept grabbing my arm and holding on as if he was on a roller coaster. Bro, you've got a hot girlfriend to the right of you; go grab her instead of me.  Either that or switch places with me, then and you can still grab me if I can grab her. This man then said to me as the fight bell rang, "There's no chance in hell that Ricky will lose this fight!"

Well I guess the odds were looking pretty good in hell last night then.

Now, round one was an all-out war. Right away, Pacquiao proved to be the faster, stronger, and more powerful fighter, as he was beating Hatton to the punch and landing the harder, cleaner thunderous blows. Two hard knock-downs came from the hands of the Pac Man and after the second knockdown, I think any other fighter would have had enough, but this is Hatton we are talking about folks.  He got up like the warrior that he is and finished the round in survivor mode, just barely escaping a third knockdown.

10-7 Pacquiao

Round two was pretty much Pacquiao finishing off what he almost completed in round one. Pacquiao displayed the true talent and skills of the evolved complete fighter that he has become by outboxing Hatton, landing at will and evading and blocking anything that Hatton was throwing.

I was hoping for it to keep going and the round was just about to end before the hardest punch that Pacquiao has ever landed in his whole career. A monster left hook came out of nowhere, landing precisely on the chin of Hatton and sent him to fall backwards like a very tall tree in the forest. If a Hatton falls in the middle of the ring at the MGM Grand and everyone sees it, does it make a sound? The answer is surprisingly no. Every single person in that sold-out arena was in utter shock and disbelief as Hatton was falling down backwards.  It was as if the world froze and everything got quiet as he was going down in slow motion.

The ref Bayless did not even count ,as he knew there was no chance at all for Hatton to continue, much less get up from that vicious KO. I think we may have seen the KO of the year and possibly the decade.

The thousands and thousands of Hatton fans were completely silenced and did not make a sound as they all exited the MGM Grand. It was as if we went from attending the fight of the year to attending a wake. 

In order to cheer everyone up again I thought should I start singing "There's Only One Ricky Hatton," but I felt it was not the right time to do so. Then, about five minutes later, they started singing the song once again at the top of their lungs.

Now, again folks as I told all of you before, it is all about sparring.

No I am not talking about the half-ass sparring that some of my colleagues mentioned they do. I am talking about the hardcore, intense fight night-level sparring that Manny spars daily in his training camp. When you hear that a fighter is flooring his sparring partners daily, deeply cutting up his sparring partners with protective head gear on who are all bigger and stronger than him, that usually means nine out of ten times that fighter will transcend this same damage into the ring come fight night.

Even more so when you hear a dominant fighter who never gets banged up or hurt in sparring suddenly does get banged up and gets black eyes from his sparring partners, that also is a pretty solid indication that he will generally get banged up in the ring come fight night as well.

Listen to me: I am the King for a reason, simply cause I know what the hell I am talking about and now you all know that.

Now for all the haters who said Hatton is too big, too strong, he never lost at 140 blah blah blah. What's good now? Where you at?

Does Manny have any haters left on this planet? Do we all now have firm believers in who is indeed the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world onto becoming quite possibly the greatest of all time?

Is it even possible to hate on Pacquiao after what he proved to us in six minutes last night?

[e-mail]