Malignaggi gets cornered by Hatton in 11th round

Ricky (The Hitman) Hatton was more like Ricky (The Trackman) Hatton on Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

In a scheduled 12-round boxing event that was supposed to be a matchup of the top two 140-pounders in the world, Hatton chased Paulie Malignaggi all night and eventually showed that the space between No. 1 and No. 2 is a wide gap.

Hatton won with an 11th-round technical knockout, which in this case was a fancy term for surrender. With 28 seconds elapsed in that round, Malignaggi's corner waved several large white towels in the direction of referee Kenny Bayless.

That is boxing sign language for "Enough. Our fighter is done. Stop this now."

And so Bayless did.

Afterward, Malignaggi argued that he was OK, that Hatton hadn't hurt him, that his corner should not have stopped it. When he saw the white towels come out, he charged toward his corner and shoved his trainer, the veteran Buddy McGirt, a former boxer who has been in more wars of this type than the 28-year-old Malignaggi could imagine.

"I'm better than this," Malignaggi said. "Maybe I wouldn't have won on points, but I'm better than being stopped."

The Brooklyn boxer, who lost for the second time in 27 fights, made a good point in that regard, when he said he had been in worse shape two years ago against Miguel Cotto in Madison Square Garden and his corner hadn't stopped that one. Indeed, Malignaggi suffered several facial fractures in that one, but stayed on his feet after a first-round knockdown all the way to the end.

Malignaggi's promoter, Lou DiBella, saw it differently.

"I wanted it stopped the round before," he said. "You could see him hurting with every punch. I wanted him around to fight another day, and a couple more rounds could have done much damage."

McGirt concurred.

"The reason I stopped the fight was that we were losing," he said. "My guy couldn't hurt him. We had five or six minutes left, and all it takes is one big punch. I'd rather have him be angry at me and be OK."

Hatton's last visit to the MGM ring was December 2007, when undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. stayed that way with a knockout in the 10th round. Interestingly, Mayweather's father, Floyd Sr., trained Hatton for this fight.

Against Malignaggi, Hatton attacked from the start. And chased and chased and caught Malignaggi often enough to make it obviously one-sided.