Ricky Hatton v Vyacheslav Senchenko: time proves too tough a foe for former world champion By the time the two-timer former world champion began his ring-walk a strongly Mancunian audience was in ferment. Watching from ringside were Roberto Duran, Joe Calzaghe and David Price, the upwardly mobile Liverpool heavyweight. The good times came rolling back. The only notable absentees - a sad note, this - were Hatton's parents, Ray and Carol, who are estranged from their son after a confrontation in a car park between patriarch and pugilist. Hatton's partner Jennifer Dooley, the mother of their daughter Millie, overcame her reservations about this comeback to stand by her man. Chewing her fingers and looking away for long spells, she was a diagram of anxiety. The opening exchanges must have calmed Dooley's nerves. Hatton displayed the old aggressive intent and his hand speed was impressive. He caught Senchenko with trademark left hook and terrific left jab. The Ukrainian's only notable reply was a right counter. Though his timing was sometimes fractionally off, Hatton kept up the assault in round two, again throwing the jab well, as promised in pre-fight interviews. Senchenko, two and a half inches taller, and with a five-inch longer reach, had lost only one of his 33 bouts: a WBA welterweight title defence against Paulie Malignaggi, who Hatton hoped to meet home and away, in Brooklyn and Manchester, to complete a lucrative three-fight series. Despite all the emotion in the arena, Hatton was determined to control his tears, to rely on head more than heart. "In my two biggest fights, against Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather I messed up by being too aggressive, too overeager, trying to jump all over them too quickly," he had said. I've got to channel all that fury and anger in a positive way. I can't throw it at Senchenko like I did against Manny Pacquiao, it's got to be controlled, there has to be a game-plan. Manchester's idol was in immaculate shape. The ravages of drink and drugs were not apparent in a face purged of its excesses. To provoke him, Senchenko appeared in a Manchester United shirt. But Hatton needed no extra incentive to restore his life and career after a long battle with depression. In the third, complacency snuck in. Hatton's hands dropped as his confidence increased and Senchenko punished him with three ramrod right hands which drew a smile of acknowledgement from Hatton but also sounded the first warning bells. The same pattern shaped round four with Senchenko again picking Hatton off but "The Hitman" swinging his way back into the round. At the end Senchenko returned to his stool panting and discouraged. But after three years of self-neglect, how far would Hatton's stamina stretch? And could he keep absorbing those jabs as he walked into battle? However many times he told himself to slip incoming punches and "zigzag" into exchanges, Hatton found himself stepping in with hands low and paying the price on the end of the visitor's jab. Yet it was that unexpected swipe to the liver, to which Hatton has done so much damage himself, that ended it. In retrospect he might have chosen an easier comeback opponent. He always said, though, that just being in the ring again was his redemption. His next big test is to be true to that claim. He has nothing to beat himself up for now.