RICKY HATTON TKO 11 PAULIE MALIGNAGGI

RINGSIDE REPORT: There has been considerable debate over whether Buddy McGirt did the right thing when he threw in the towel to save Paulie Malignaggi from further punishment in the 11th round of Saturday night’s one-sided fight with Ricky Hatton in Las Vegas.

As always, it depends how you look at it. Malignaggi had stuck it out for 10 rounds and 28 seconds. He hadn’t been down, but he showed facial damage and he was getting knocked around. It seemed to me that his legs sagged yet again when Hatton left-hooked him early in round 11. Malignaggi really didn’t have a lot left, and Hatton was as strong as he had been in the opening round.

At the post-fight press conference, Malignaggi’s promoter, Lou DiBella, said that he had gone to the corner to suggest to McGirt that maybe the trainer should think about pulling Paulie out, and it was decided to give Malignaggi one more round.

So, this was a team decision and not just a McGirt decision.

I think that the concern here was that, in an unwinnable fight, Malignaggi had weakened to the extent that Hatton might knock him down and overwhelm him.

Malignaggi didn’t have the defiant look of, say, Brian Vera in the fight with James Kirkland that preceded the main event (more on this later).

A top referee recently told me that what often decides him whether or not to intervene is if one of the boxers seems to have “lost the will to fight”.

Malignaggi, although gamely hanging on, had the look of “not wanting to be there”, as we’d say in Britain.

Hatton, who was defending his IBO junior welter title, was leading by 99-91 on all three judges’ scorecards.

Malignaggi got the first on judge Duane Ford’s card, the fourth on Jerry Roth’s and the fifth on Glenn Trowbridge’s card.

This means that Malignaggi lost seven rounds on all three judges’ cards, while in the other three rounds the best he could muster was to win the round on one scorecard.

In consensus scoring, then (which is to say, when at least two of the three judges agree on who won the round), this was a shutout for Hatton.

Seeing the hopelessness of Malignaggi’s situation, and perhaps fearing that he could crumple at any moment, it is difficult to fault his camp’s decision to pull the plug.

This said, however, the stoppage did come as a surprise to me.

Malignaggi was getting punished no worse than he had been in several of the earlier rounds. It looked to me as if he could have made it through the 11th and 12th, but McGirt and DiBella were closer to the situation.

It did seem to most people, though, that Hatton was going to have to settle for a points win.

I heard from two sources today that an online sportsbook that had live betting on the fight was offering odds of -1,000 ($100 to win $1,000) on Hatton winning by KO/TKO/DQ as round 11 started.

One of my most astute readers, a really sharp boxing guy, said that even at those astonishingly attractive odds he hesitated on making the play. He told me: “I was just waiting for Malignaggi to get wobbled one more time.” Then, in a flash, the fight was over and, my reader ruefully remarked, the wagering lines disappeared from the screen in the blink of an eye.

The point of this is that someone who understands boxing and backs his opinions with money was expecting the fight to go the limit.

I did find the stoppage surprising but, for reasons stated, I can also see the reasoning behind it.

I like Malignaggi, but this fight was like a bigger kid bullying a weaker one in a playground fight. I did pick Hatton but I expected a highly competitive fight, instead of which it was a mismatch. Malignaggi can take some consolation, though, in knowing that he fought a Hatton who was the sharpest and most impressive that he has been in some time: clearly the Hatton-Floyd Mayweather Sr. combination worked very well indeed.

As for Kirkland-Vera, whose junior middle 10-rounder preceded the main event, quite frankly I thought that this could have been stopped several rounds before referee Vic Drakulich called a halt in the eighth.

It reminded me of Alfredo Angulo beating up Andre Tsurkan in another fight that should, I thought, have been stopped at least two rounds earlier than it was.

The thing is, though, both Tsurkan and Vera were fighting back and showing the referee that, come hell or high water, they were going to make a fight of it as best they could. It was only right at the very end that they had that: “OK, I’m done” type of look about them and, sorry to say, Malignaggi had an “I’m done” type of look at a much earlier stage in the proceedings.

Often, on these big shows, the off-TV undercards have very little of interest. This show was a little different. There were actually three undercard fights I wanted to have a look at, and which was one reason I made the trip to be on site.

In the first of the three, the Thai junior welter, Sirimongkol, pounded out a decision win (surprisingly, only a majority verdict) over game veteran Rogelio Castaneda. Sirimongkol, a former 130-pound champion, looked strong and workmanlike but nothing out of the ordinary at the heavier weight.

The junior featherweight fight between Rey Bautista and Mexican veteran Heriberto Ruiz was intriguing because this was the fight that was going to show whether or not the 22-year-old Filipino had world title potential: the one-round KO defeat against Daniel Ponce De Leon was a shocking setback but fighters can, and do, get caught early — even the really good ones.

Alas, Bautista was cruelly exposed in the eight-rounder, which he lost widely on points. Ruiz knocked him down and took him to school. It didn’t help that Bautista suffered a cut over the right eye in the third round, but it was already clear that he was overmatched although I didn’t write “Fight’s over” in my notebook until the second round. Bautista was dropped by a left hook in the third and outboxed and outfought in just about every round. I gave Bautista two rounds but wouldn’t argue too much with the shutout scoring of one judge — it was that one-sided.

Then, in the last fight before HBO’s broadcast began, Matthew Hatton got the evening off to a good start for the family by easily outpointing Ben Tackie in their welterweight 10-rounder.

Hatton boxed a smart, crisp fight against the 35-year-old Tackie, who was moving up from 140 pounds. It was Hatton’s fight almost all the way — he did get rocked by a left hook in the ninth — and I agreed with the lopsided scores of the judges. Hatton’s conditioning, hand speed and workrate were all quite impressive. I did tip Tackie, but I also mentioned in the preview that Hatton was probably a bit better than many were giving him credit for being. In fact he beat Tackie easily, although the old warrior from Ghana did look even slower and even more unable to pull the trigger than in any of his previous fights (or at least the ones that I was able to watch).

Tackie looked as if he could see the openings, but threw the punches a second or two too late. Part of the problem was Hatton’s quickness and movement, but Tackie looked a very old fighter in the ring on Saturday night.