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 self-destruction — 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 guiding the stable of young prospects at his gym in Hyde around the pitfalls into which he stumbled, then on to world titles of their own.

He is bustling over that threshold. Happy at last to leave Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao to occupy the stage which they turned into his scaffold.

they say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but there is nothing to prevent Hatton going back to retrieve that part of his soul which he left behind.

Mayweather and 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 acclaimed him as indestructible, the humiliation is public and the psychological consequences devastating.

When it i s accompanied by discovery of what he perceives to t his day as betrayal by his parents, from whom he insists he will forever be estranged, it leads to that shocking 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 do it. So i decided to drink myself to death.’

the booze and drugs-fuelled scandals which ensued have been well documented. the explanation is more poignant: ‘ When you’re stumbling about in that fog you don’t even 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 i n 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 even 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 f ace 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 third and final defeat in his unwise, one-fight comeback.

‘i was hurt again,’ he says. ‘i was angry. 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 most to pass judgment on the Money Man and the PacMan.

He vividly recalls his duels with h 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. Specially 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 and ranting.

‘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, 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. Felt exhausted.’

Hatton went d o wn, 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 Mancunican referee.’

After that 2007 winter of his discontent came the spring of 2009, the return to the MGM and the advent of Pacquiao.

‘Felt bad going in this time,’ he says, blaming Mayweather’s f ather Floyd Snr, who had temporarily taken over from his 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. Yeah, with Manny it is the 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. We who had watched i n alarm as he subsided flat on his back — as if laid in a coffin with Pacquiao as his undertaker — were relieved he had been taken only to hospital, not to the morgue.

‘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 hi s s hots. 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 i f anyone can beat Floyd for speed it’s Manny. And that 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 ‘Yet... yeah yeah... I still go for Floyd Floyd. Just. On points. At home.

‘But it’s so close that if I was down to my last pound note 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 would have given Sugar Ray (Leonard) a helluva fight.

‘Manny is an eight-division world champion. He’s super-human.

‘ But the greatest ever? No. That’s Sugar Ray Robinson. 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.