How one simple mistake led to one of the most brutal knockouts of all time

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time to throw it back. This time we’re transporting to the far-away year of 2009, when English welterweight Rickie Hatton was one of the best boxers on the planet.

He had lost to Floyd Mayweather two years earlier but recovered with impressive wins over Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi, the latter under the guidance of Floyd Mayweather Sr., Floyd’s father, who helped Hatton re-tool his technique to make him more mobile and better defensively.

So when Hatton fought Manny Pacquiao in May of 2009 it was billed as the most-high profile and exciting fight of the year. And it was, but not for the reasons Hatton would’ve wanted.

Pacquiao, to be fair, was brilliant. His hands were incisive and lightning fast, but the devastating manner of his soon-to-be victory was brought on in large part because of Hatton’s mistakes.

The Englishman didn’t move his feet enough, but above all else, he didn’t move his head. He was boxing like the old Rickie Hatton, trying to fight toe-to-toe with Pacquiao, and he ended up swallowing far too many big punches because of it. With every one you could see him slipping deeper and deeper into his old habits, opening the door ever-wider for Pacquiao to walk through.

Mayweather saw what was happening and implored his man to listen.

“Move your head, man. You’ve gotta move your head. Make him think…You’re trying to overpower him. Don’t overpower him. Keep your hands up, man.”

 But Hatton didn’t. Or maybe he just couldn’t He kept lapsing into his comfort zone, so Pacquiao kept landing big, clean punches.
Until, eventually, he landed one there was no coming back from.

It was one of the worst — if not the worst — one-punch knockouts in boxing history, and it effectively marked the end of Hatton’s boxing career. He didn’t fight again for three years and only returned one last time to fight (and lose) to Vyacheslav Senchenko in 2012.

“When Manny knocked me out, it was a brutal knockout, and I remember how my poor girlfriend and how my family felt,” Hatton later said about the KO. “It’s not nice seeing someone knocked out like that.”