Boxing: Hatton Has World at His Feet

With one spectacular win Ricky Hatton's marketability has potentially gone through the roof. Once the party hangovers subside and the champion has enjoyed a well-earned holiday followed, no doubt, by the mother and father of all benders once he gets home to his Hattersley local, there will be some serious talking to be done.

Dennis Hobson, Hatton's co-promoter, described his fighter as "a promoter's dream" after the fight: "We are not just making memories, we are making history." But, although it is apparent that Hobson and his American partner, Art Pelullo, are enjoying the moment, it is equally clear that some of boxing's biggest promotional hitters are queuing up for a chew on the tender Hatton morsel.

The manner of Hatton's win means the powerful American television network HBO is already mulling over the viability of putting Hatton on to a US pay-per-view platform for the first time. By demolishing José Luis Castillo, the pressure will mount on Hatton to move on to the level of mega-fights. The word from within the Hatton camp is that they are eyeing a possible November or December date, maybe at Madison Square Garden in New York, with the popular Italian-American Paulie Malignaggi as a potential opponent. Last week Malignaggi, a slick boxer rather than a concussive puncher, won the IBF light-welterweight title against Australia's Lovemore N'dou and he would be a decent ticket seller among East Coast US fans.

Malignaggi would also represent a relatively low-risk opponent for Hatton and HBO may have other ideas. It seems inevitable that the network will now listen closely to overtures from other promoters keen to match their star turns with Hatton. At 76 Bob Arum still knows how to make a buck and has the Puerto Rican world welterweight champion, Miguel Cotto, on his books. Arum would relish the chance to make Cotto-Hatton, particularly with Cotto calling out the Mancunian after defeating Brooklyn's Zab Judah at Madison Square Garden earlier this month.

Meanwhile Oscar De La Hoya, whose Golden Boy Promotions have been the biggest players in the US pay-per-view market over the last year, can offer another potentially outstanding opponent in Shane Moseley or, intriguingly, De La Hoya himself, who might sense the opportunity of cashing in on one last monster payday.

Golden Boy were impressive in their promotion of the recent De La Hoya fight with Floyd Mayweather, which smashed all box-office records, even if the night ultimately failed to match up to the hype. One of the first calls to Hatton's dressing room after his Castillo win came from De La Hoya, while Marco Antonio Barrera - one of De La Hoya's business partners in Gold Boy - was in the ring carrying one of Hatton's belts. Barrera is a long-time friend of Hatton's but he is unquestionably cute enough to realise how much money might be made out of an association with him, especially bearing in mind the unprecedented level of support Hatton now takes with him across the world.

Hatton himself still sees Mayweather as his ultimate test and has said: "People say he is the best pound-for-pound fighter, so he is the one I would want eventually because I wouldn't want my career to end without saying I fought him."

The problem is that Mayweather, for the time being anyway, is retired. After beating De La Hoya in a fight that earned him around $15m (£7.5m) Mayweather said he had as much money as he could ever need and, as a world champion at five weights, had achieved all he could ever want in boxing. Despite that, his trainer and uncle, Roger Mayweather, was in Las Vegas this week hinting heavily that his fighter would return for the bundles of cash a Hatton contest would generate.

Hatton and Hobson have also spoken of their desire for a homecoming contest. Hobson said again yesterday: "Coming back to fight in England is something we will have to look at closely. Ricky thinks he could sell out Wembley Stadium if he is in there against the right opponent and that is a fantastic possibility. If 8,000 fans are able to travel to Las Vegas and make it sound like a Manchester fight, imagine how many would turn out to see him on home ground."