Uh..are you reading too much Jim Lampley ? This strikes me as a bit out of place for you. It was a stunning upset. While I thought Kostya was getting old, he looked dynamite in taking out Shambra Mitchell. This is heck of a division at 140 with Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather taking on Gatti this summer and Cotto and Vivian Harris waiting in the wings.

The boys in my life were all watching the fight last night. Very exciting.

I knew Hatton would win, seen small bits of his fights before, but never much as its on Sky here and I dont have Sky sports, but he seems to punch hard and can take a punch. (Good news is ITV may have future rights!)
British boxing is in good shape right now (Khan, Calzaghe) - I think helped by the fact that the US is going through a very poor patch and it seems to me most of the world's "top" boxers are getting old and should have been left brain-damaged by now; the problem is boxers these days only fight 1-2 bouts a year and they cherry-pick.

I'd like to see Hatton maintain a good 4-5 fights a year and actually just take on all the top 10 so he can retire young (29/30).

The US is going through a poor patch ? I think the best three fighters in the world are Hopkins, Pretty Boy Floyd and Winky Wright, all Americans. While the Americans have three of the four major belts at heavy (Brewster, Byrd and Ruiz), none of them are any good. I think you may be seeing the big boys as the state of the game.

Bernard Hopkins is 40.
Pretty Boy Floyd - I don't know of him
Winky Wright is 33 (34 in November)
Umm btw Kosta Tszyu was regarded as the worlds best lb-for-lb boxer before Hatton beat him.

Heavyweight boxing is in dire straits atm. I want to know who are the 18-25 year old Americans who will dominate the next decade? Obviously we don't see them here in the UK until they are big stars, and that's the problem they aren't young stars yet.

Never heard of Floyd Mayweather ? Well, he only took the titles at 130, 135 and 140.

Over here, we have Hopkins (who is 40 but spanked Trinidad, Howard Eastman etc) as P 4 P followed by Mayweather. Boxing Digest, the Ring, the KO magazine series are all in agreement. I think they had Kostya as 4th.

Take a look at Samuel Peters and Calvin Brock (he beat Jameel McCline a few weeks ago) at heavy. They seem to be the rising stars at the moment though I can count the number of rising stars who flickered from Tua to Ibeabuchi to Michael Grant.

Honestly though, the heavies are in bad shape. Monte Barret takes on Hasim Rahman to get Klitchsko (the good one). Ruiz is a joke. Byrd can't crack an egg with his punch.

Ibeabuchi did no flickering, it was raping that got him in trouble. He would be the undisputed champ right now since he is head and shoulders above anyone else in the division. No mention of Jeramine Taylor? tisk, tisk. By the way Kostya is anything but American. On the topic of Hatton: He lowers the quality of every fight, I appreciate the heart(that Kostya certainly did not show) but the wild swinging, the holding and rabbit punching I can do without.

I'm with you on Ibeabuchi. I think his battle with Byrd showed that.

I was talking about heavyweight prospects but sure Taylor and Jeff Lacy look very promising. So does Kid Diamond but I think he is losing Saturday.

Jeff Lacy is meant to be fighting two Brits this year: Robin Reid and Joe Calazaghe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/bbc_world_rankings/default.stm