RICKY Hatton may have to give up the precious IBF belt which he battered from the grasp of Kostya Tszyu last summer.

The Hitman has been ordered to defend that title against mandatory challenger Naoufel Ben Rabah, but TV station HBO which is bankrolling his next three fights in the USA would not pay up for him to face the Australian-based Tunisian fighter, a virtual unknown in the States.

Instead, Hatton has signed to face New York's WBA welterweight champion Luis Collazo in Boston on May 13 - with the IBF now insisting that a deal be struck to fight Rabah by May 2, or Hatton could lose the belt.

"We told HBO I would reluctantly move up to welterweight on the understanding that I could come back down to ten stone after the Collazo fight and make my mandatory defence against Rabah," he told M.E.N. Sport.

Politics

"The IBF belt means a lot to me, because I won it against Tszyu, which makes it a massive prize. But once I had signed for the Collazo fight, Rabah's people did a double shuffle and told the IBF that their man wants to fight for it now, so the IBF are saying they might have to strip me.

"It upsets me a bit, but HBO didn't want me to make a mandatory defence. They are bothered about the quality of the fighter you face, not the belt. There is so much politics in boxing it depresses you at times."

Hatton also revealed that he has accepted the fight with Collazo after a series of withdrawals and injuries narrowed the field down to two - either Collazo or former WBA light- welterweight champion Vivian Harris.

"We had initially turned down Collazo, but in the end it was either him or Harris, who was a man knocked out by Carlos Maussa, and who I, in turn, knocked out," he said.

Hatton was speaking at the unveiling of a plaque in his honour at the New Inn in Hattersley, where his parents were the licensees from 1985 to 1992, and where he honed his boxing skills in a makeshift gym set up between the beer barrels in the pub's cellar.

Tweet