MANNY JUMPS DOWN YOUR THROAT BUT FLOYD HAS THE BRAINS. HE’LL WIN IT... JUST
Ricky Hatton, who fought Mayweather and Pacquiao, on next week’s Vegas showdown
RICKY HATTON is embarking on an odyssey into the most traumatic and ecstatic recesses of his past. This helps cement his belief that he has found a future after heroic prize- fighting and epic binge drinking.
First to Las Vegas, to exorcise the last of his demons by witnessing the two maestros of the fistic arts who sent him crashing to comatose defeats — and to the precipice of selfdestruction — as they resolve which of them is the greatest boxer on earth.
Then back to Manchester, to paint the town Man City blue by way of celebrating the 10th anniversary of that bestial victory over another fearsome warrior, Kostya Tszyu, on the tumultuous night he won his first world championship. The shrinks call it closure. The Hitman sees a door wide open to life after boxing, after battling to the peak of the hardest game, after grappling with the depths of depression. A life dedicated to the stable of young prospects at his gym in Hyde and guiding them around the pitfalls into which he stumbled, then on to world titles of their own.
They say what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas but there is nothing to prevent Hatton going back to retrieve that part of his soul which he left behind.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao knocked him out, in their differing ways. America’s Money Man with the accumulation of his ring genius, the Filipino PacMan by the application of his nuclear hitting power.
He will watch them dispute boxing’s mythical pound-for-pound throne — and bank their very real hundreds of millions — without envy.
‘No regrets,’ says Hatton. ‘Even though I was stopped from doing better in one fight and should have done better in the other.
‘The referee broke up my rhythm every time I got close in on Floyd. But then I got mad and lost the plot — my fault — so left myself open.
‘I should have been better prepared for Manny. Dreadful training camp. Then I got caught with massive shots I didn’t see coming.
‘I’m not saying I would have beaten them. These are the two best boxers in the world. But I should have made it harder for them.’ Acceptance opens the pathway to deliverance. Before he could take the enlightened step towards becoming a promoter and above all a trainer, Hatton plunged into darkness. For a fighting man who believes himself invincible, sudden defeat brings self-torment.
When it happens a second time, again in full view of fanatical worshippers who had acclaimed him as indestructible, the humiliation is public and the psychological consequences devastating.
When it is accompanied by discovery of what he perceives to this day as betrayal by his parents, from whom he insists he will forever be estranged, it leads to that night spent sitting at his kitchen table on the verge of slitting open his wrists.
‘I wanted to commit suicide,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have the courage to. So I decided to drink myself to death.’
The booze and drug-fuelled scandals which ensued have been well documented. The explanation is more poignant: ‘When you’re stumbling about in that fog you don’t know what you’re getting into.’
That protracted attempt at killing himself ended with his partner Jennifer delivering unto him their first child, Millie.
‘They saved me,’ he says. ‘In the nick of time.’
The rescuing of Ricky — by his new family and his son from his earlier marriage — took a while. It was validated at Christmas as he went out into the cold, wet dead of night to feed the homeless alcoholics in the Manchester gutters into which he came so close to descending himself.
‘I had hit rock bottom,’ he says. ‘I saw people who hadn’t been able to climb back. I connected with them and now I go back to see them pretty regularly and try to help.’
This is part of his own recovery and even the acceptance of a ringside seat at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 2 — a night when Hollywood royalty are being refused complimentary tickets — is proof of his compliance with the process.
Hatton will occupy one of those desperately sought-after places — $10,000 face value, currently $200,000 on the black market — as a commentator for Sky Sports.
That is the network which ended its contract with Hitman the Promoter — callously by text message — after he suffered his final defeat in his unwise, one-fight comeback.
‘I was angry,’ he says. ‘ Couldn’t believe they would do that after everything I’d done to build their boxing coverage. But I’ve put it behind me now. After all I’ve been through to make life good again, why give myself the angst of holding a grudge?’
Besides, he is as eager as everyone for a close-up view of the richest fight of all time — and more qualified than virtually anyone to pass judgement on the Money Man and the PacMan.
He vividly recalls his deathly duels with the greatest boxers of their generation.
‘My problem was always my weight ballooning up and down,’ he says. ‘That was my achilles heel. So I was fighting the greatest with the equivalent of one hand tied behind my back. I felt good going in against Floyd, especially after those scenes at the weigh-in where I was first on the scales and shouted “Let’s be having him” and I saw him looking at all my thousands of fans roaring.
‘I did OK in the early rounds. I was in the fight and he knew it. He’s very accurate with his shots. But I was giving him trouble inside until Joe Cortez (the referee) started breaking up my rhythm.
‘Vegas is Floyd’s home town. Joe
was calling break as I was still shaping to throw my punches. Then he took a point off me for nothing. I always liked to flow through the fight but as soon as Floyd landed a good shot Joe called stop.
‘Stop, stop, stop. It was tiring for me. I lost my head. Fatal. It’s not the power with Floyd but when he picked me off in the 10th I was fatigued. I felt exhausted.’
Hatton went down, the concussive effect exaggerated by hitting his head against a corner post as he fell. He regained his feet but Cortez intervened as Mayweather resumed the assault. Although Hatton says: ‘I did know where I was. And as it was stopped I was thinking I’d love to fight him again, in Manchester. With a Mancunian referee.’
After that 2007 winter of his discontent came the spring of 2009, the return to the MGM and Pacquiao. ‘I felt bad going in this time,’ he says, blaming Mayweather’s father Floyd Snr who had temporarily taken over from long-time trainer Billy Graham. ‘Over-trained. Knackered.’
Hatton had prepared to move away from the PacMan’s fabled left hook only to be dropped twice in the first round by clinical rights.
It was to end, gruesomely, in the second but Hatton says: ‘It sounds odd but I felt I was getting into it. Then I didn’t know what hit me.’
It was that thunderbolt left and he adds: ‘I was just lying there. When they got me up I had to ask what happened. With Manny it is power.’
This was the only time in his career Hatton failed to come out next morning to face the media — and the music. Few held it against him.
‘I was devastated,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t face myself, let alone anyone else.’ Now, from the safe side of the ropes, he is asked to pick a winner between the two legends he dared challenge.
‘Floyd is the brains of boxing,’ he says. ‘Always thinking. So clever defensively. So sharp in picking his shots. Though not a murderous puncher like Manny. He’s undefeated because he can always find a way to win.
‘Pacquiao is the power. He’s always jumping down your throat. Never stops throwing punches. I wasn’t in there long enough with him to work him out fully. But what I do know is that if anyone can beat Floyd for speed it’s Manny.
‘And as a southpaw he neutralises that left shoulder roll defence of Floyd’s. Even more important he throws the straight rights which could get through that defence.
‘Yet I still go for Floyd. Just. On points. At home. But it’s so close that if I was down to my last pound I wouldn’t want to put it on either of them.’
The victor will be lauded as the king of the modern ring.
HATTON chuckles: ‘They’re both heading for the Hall of Fame. They’re the Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Duran of our time. It would have been a tragedy for boxing if they’d never fought.
‘I guess Floyd would have handled Tommy (Hearns) and given Sugar Ray (Leonard) a hell of a fight.
‘Manny is an eight-division world champion. He’s super-human.
‘But the greatest ever? No. That’s Sugar Ray Robinson — he had everything. So strong, so athletic. So talented that if you could reach back, pluck him out of his prime, drop him into the MGM Grand on May 2 and he boxed the way he used to he wouldn’t look one inch out of place at the top of today’s game.’ Hatton will be content looking on. ‘No regrets,’ he repeats. ‘Not even for the old lifestyle, all the boozing and being Ricky Fatton and all that madness for a time. That was me being what I am at heart. One of the lads. It was the basis of my bond with the fans. Still is.
‘And when I look back on a career in which I was a two-weight world champion, fought everyone, and until that damn comeback only lost to the two greatest fighters of my generation — I feel very proud.’
On the morning we talk he is hard at work at the Hatton Health Club, putting what he calls ‘my league of nations’ through their paces.
They send him wannabe hitmen from all over Britain and the world and he takes under his wing ‘those who make me tick’. The latest hot prospect comes from an unlikely source, the country town of Nantwich, and on this day he is pounding along rather than ticking over. He is in the ring taking massive shots to the pads and his body protector from an 18-year-old called Nathan Gorman whose heavyweight hands are unusually fast for a big lad.
‘Never heard of him?’ says Hatton. ‘Everyone will have heard him after the Rio Olympics next year. He’s only had nine fights but he’s won them all and he’s already the No 5 amateur super-heavyweight in the world.’
The enthusiasm is as blazingly infectious as the personality which made him not only the Hitman but also the Pied Piper of British boxing.
‘No regrets,’ he repeats. But he gives young Gorman a playful whack and says: ‘Though I won’t let these lads make the same mistakes I did.’
The frankness enlivens his after-dinner speeches, at which he enjoys ‘making people laugh’.
It sheds light on those black alleyways where he offers a helping hand to Manchester’s down-andouts, ‘which I love doing’.
It will illuminate the late-night party in June at a warehouse there, as a heaving crowd help him commemorate that epic victory over Kostya Tszyu a turbulent decade ago. Of course he still revels in the recognition.
The next time he goes to Vegas, after watching the Money Man and the PacMan, he wants it to be in the corner of the ring at the MGM Grand Garden as one of his proteges bids for a world title: ‘After fighting, this is the next best thing.’
The last time he went to Vegas was for the annual convention of the WBC in December. He grins: ‘As I walked through the casino at the Mirage the American croupiers started chanting “There’s only one Ricky Hatton”.’ There still is.