By Ben Dirs
BBC Sport at Manchester's MEN Arena |
In the closing stages of the ninth round, Tszyu hit Hatton with a flurry of low blows, prompting Hatton to step aside and launch a booming left into the champion's groin.
It was the punch that said: "I've got your number, sunshine."
Tszyu crumpled over and took a minute to walk off the pain, and his shell-shocked expression told all at ringside that the guts had been ripped out of his campaign.
As Hatton said after the fight, "boxing's no tickling contest", and that is a sentiment Tszyu would surely agree with.
For 11 pulsating rounds, Hatton gave Tszyu such a lesson in pressure fighting, it must have been like sharing a ring with a buzz saw.
The 26-year-old Hatton swarmed, smothered and tangled, pushed and pulled, all part of the plan to negate Tszyu's infamous right hand.
"Right from the outset I seemed to be slipping the right hand and closing the gap," said Hatton.
"His leverage is at the end of the punch so giving ground is what Kostya likes his opponents to do.
"But I was either too close and taking the sting out of his right or getting half a block.
"My main objective was to take it out of him those first four or five rounds, smother him, lean on him, push him and sap his strength and come on strong in the latter stages."
In short, drag him out to sea and drown him.
It was without doubt the finest performance by a British boxer in a British ring in 20 years.
Not since Barry McGuigan, one of the sport's finest pressure fighters, beat the great Eusebio Pedroza at Loftus Road in June 1985 has this country seen anything like it.
Hatton's work fizzed, a perfect combination of spoiling tactics and clinical punching with both right and left, to both head and body.
And what of the crowd of 22,000 crammed into Manchester's MEN Arena in the early hours of Sunday morning to see their hero perform?
They were simply magnificent - four walls of noise, a blurred tumult of passion for a man and a sport they clearly love.
Before the fight, Tszyu said he had seen it all before, the night he fought Mexican legend Julio Cesar Chavez in front of 18,000 in Phoenix.
But that was Phoenix, this was Manchester - and we all know which is loudest now.
The sight of any defeated champion is a sad one, but Tszyu has had a magnificent reign over the light welterweight division and the way he conducted himself in defeat was exemplary.
"I'm a proud man," the 35-year-old said after the fight. "But today I lost to a better fighter."
One assumes he will retire now and leave the 10-stone ranks in the capable hands of his conqueror.
As for Hatton, he will take a long rest while his promoter Frank Warren mulls his charge's next move, of which there are many.
Rather than a rematch with Tszyu or any unification fights, Hatton will more likely take one or two mandatory defences as a victory lap.
Then he can start thinking about rival light welterweight titlists such as Arturo Gatti (WBC) or Miguel Cotto (WBO), or even lightweight king Diego Corrales.
And with rumours ripe that Warren is back in bed with ITV, Hatton should become the household name that he always should have been.
"It was fantastic for British boxing and we're on a real roll now," said Warren after the fight.
"This sport is a live sport and it's come even more alive tonight."
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It was fantastic for British boxing and we're on a real roll now
