Ricky Hatton ended Saturday night in hospital, Manny Pacquiao finished it singing ballads on a man-made beach with the band he had flown in from the Philippines. The division between winners and losers in boxing can be brutal, but that was an apt description of Pacquiao’s destruction of the Mancunian. He knocked him down three times, leaving him unconscious in the middle of the ring with one second remaining in the second round.

The finishing punch was a vicious left hook that the Filipino seemed to pull up from his boots. Hatton was out as soon as it landed. “He’s a monster, the best fighter in the world,” Hatton said after regaining his feet and his senses.

Pacquiao was brilliant, every bit the best boxer in the world. His handspeed was breathtaking, his punches delivered with devastating accuracy. Statistics showed that he landed with a power shot on average every 5½ seconds. It is difficult to imagine a more conclusive result as Pacquiao took Hatton’s IBO and Ring magazine light-welterweight titles.

“What happened with that fight is that it broke into a brawl,” Lee Beard, Hatton’s assistant trainer, said. “Ricky got a bit overexcited and he paid the price. Ricky was attacking and it’s the punch that you don’t see which knocks you out.”

Hatton had hoped to slow Pacquiao and make his strength count. He had struggled with southpaws in the past and was watching out for Pacquiao’s left, but it was a right hook that started the downfall, spinning Hatton around and dropping him on his face.

The Mancunian looked stunned rather than badly hurt, but panic set in as he was being hurt by punches he did not see. He struggled to cover up and tried punching his way out of trouble, but he was not moving his head and was an easy target. A big left hook rocked him and another sent him sliding along the ropes to the floor in his corner. The bell to end the round saved him.

Survival was probably the best tactic for the second round, but Hatton came out aggressively. He landed with a good right hook but was shaken to his boots by a fierce left hook, then a right, then a combination.

After a warning for a low blow from Kenny Bayless, the referee, he landed with a left hook, but was driven across the ring by a two-fisted barrage. The ten-second warning seemed to indicate that Hatton would survive another round, but Pacquiao landed his sickening finisher. “It was nothing personal,” Pacquiao said. “I was just doing my job.”