Ryan Burnett keeps on running despite lack of support from boxing industry

On Sunday, Ryan Burnett is running the Belfast Marathon – but there is more to it than that. 

The former unified bantamweight world champion is doing it while pushing a cart that weighs 140lbs.

That’s right. He’s running 26.2 miles pushing a pale blue cart up and down the slopes of Belfast and he is doing it to raise money for The Ricky Hatton Foundation and TAMHI [Tackling Awareness of Mental Health Issues] Northern Ireland, a mental health charity.

Hatton was his first trainer and promoter in the pros and the death of the Manchester legend hit Burnett hard. 

He wanted to do something to raise awareness and funds for the charities and so here he is. Alongside him, five runners will be running relay legs of varying lengths, starting with Belfast DJ Pete Snodden, this writer, former world middleweight champion Andy Lee, Irish great Carl Frampton, and Si Heaton, Ricky Hatton’s best friend.

Here, Ryan explains why he has taken the challenge on.

You can donate to support Burnett here.

BoxingScene: So Ryan, it's been a while since I said this, but how's training camp been?

Ryan Burnett: Do you know what? That's so nice to hear. No, it's been seven months now since I started the running and it's been brutal. Like people go, once you get into it, you'll start enjoying it again. But I'm yet to go for a run and go, ‘I enjoyed that one.’ It's just been hard the whole time.

BS: Obviously you retired because of like medical issues and pains and injuries and that. How's the pain been? And have you had pain and injuries? 

RB: At the beginning, yes. My back, every time I did a run, I was, my back was in such a bad way. So I just had to really lock in on my mobility and movement and just trying to strengthen my back as much as possible. And that's helped. I also got like a stress fracture on the side of my foot, probably like three or four months ago, which put me out of running for quite a bit of time. But apart from that, it's the injury side of things has not been as bad as what I thought it was going to be.

BS: So how did you get to this decision to run a marathon 26.2 miles in Belfast for the Ricky Hatton Foundation and TAMHI, the Northern Irish Mental Health Charity, pushing a 63 and a half kilo cart?
RB: So I've worked alongside with TAMHI for a number of years now. I'm their ambassador. And I've always just tried to do my bit and help people. And with the Rick situation, it hasn't really left me. I feel like when I talk about it or I think about it, I get like this like weight on my chest and it's like lump in my throat. I gotta shake it off.

And I just thought to myself, maybe if I can swap that feeling with some sort of drive. And in the meantime, help people. I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, what could I do that I would find really hard?’ Because I need something physically demanding. So I'll run a marathon. And I've never run a marathon before. The furthest I think I've ever ran is probably about 15K.

And I've not run in six years, nearly seven years. And I thought, ‘Well, I'll run a marathon.’ But the person that I am, I have this thing where normal is never good enough for me.

Now, not running a marathon is normal because it's extremely hard, but it feels like a lot of people go, ‘I'll run a marathon.’ So I thought to myself, ‘I need to do something that almost frightens me to give me some sort of drive.’

So I thought, ‘Well, what's really difficult? Well, I'll push 63.5 kilos. That's the weight of Ricky Hutton when he won his first title.’

And with that, there was so much meaning behind it. It sounds like something that not many people would try to do or have done. And that itself gave me the bit of a fright that I needed to be like, ‘Right, this is it.’ And then I reached out to TAMHI and I told them, ‘Look, I'm going to up this a bit now. This is what I'm going to do.’ 

BS: Obviously, there's a relay. I'm very proud that I'm doing a leg. How did you come to the decision to run a relay? (Burnett is running the full distance) 

RB: Yeah, they were saying to me ‘When you're running this marathon, it's a long time. It's going to be a long journey by yourself,’ especially pushing what I'm pushing.

And they had said to me, ‘It'll help you quite a bit if someone's just constantly there with you, just taking your mind, even if they're just running beside you, it'll be taking your mind off something.’ And I said, ‘Well, it's a good idea. I'll get people that are close to me and close to Ricky.’

And those emotional connections will spur me on when it gets tough because Belfast, I don't know if you know, the marathon route is really, it's up and down, up and down. And with this cart, any sort of uphill or any sort of downhill, it changes the challenge drastically. And apparently there's quite a few of them in Belfast.

So I'm going to need someone there beside me when those little moments creep in to keep me accountable, keep me right.

Originally it was meant to be Simon Heaton, who's Ricky Hatton's best friend [starting off the relay]. Then yourself, I know how close you and Ricky were. I just thought it was a really fitting person to be with me.

Then you've got Andy Lee, who I've looked up to since I was a kid. I trained with Andy when I was probably nine years old and I've always trained with him throughout my amateur career and professional career. So I've always looked up to Andy.

Then the same with Carl Frampton. Carl Frampton was always that couple of years older than me and he was in the same gym as me. So I always inspired to be that older guy who was achieving stuff.

I thought that would be a great one to be with me. And then the last one was supposed to be Campbell Hatton. And I just thought finishing the line with Campbell would have been something special, but unfortunately he can't make it.

So I've changed things around a wee bit. So it's going to be starting off with me as a guy called Pete Snodden, who's a massive name in Belfast. He's on Belfast Radio.

Everyone knows him and I've always been in contact with Pete throughout my career. So I just thought that's a nice fit. Then the second leg is yourself.

Always a good fit. Then the third leg, Andy. Fourth leg, Carl Frampton.

And then the last leg, I'm finishing it with Ricky Hatton's best mate, Simon Heaton.

BS: You set a target of raising £20,000. It's tough out there though, isn't it?

RB: I really thought that the boxing world would jump behind this and really like help me out, but it's a bit sad to say that not many of the boxing world has sort of helped out the situation, but it's a bit sad to say, but maybe my expectations were too high, but like you said, it is the cost of living and people are donating constantly because there's a load of marathons happening at the moment and stuff like that. So maybe I didn't take any of that into consideration when I set the target so high.

But at the moment, I think I've raised about seven grand, which is fantastic. And if it doesn't hit the 20, well, it is what it is, I suppose, at least I've done something and the bit that I have raised will go to a great cause.

BS: It is about raising awareness as much as raising money.

RB: Yeah. The amount of people that have reached out to me and like over the past seven months and said, ‘What you're doing is incredible…’ It's helped me or the amount of people that I've had contact me that I've pushed towards and TAMHI and I’m helping them, it's massive, like loads. So many people have, from what I've seen, have benefited from me sharing and talking about mental health and stuff like that. So that alone makes everything that I've done worth it. It's not about hitting that money target. It's about have you genuinely, for me, helped at least one person? And I know definitely that I have, so that's it. It was a success for me already. It's made a difference.

BS: In terms of your own personal lows, Ryan, were your lowest of your lowest moments come linked to boxing? Like, so say your injuries and obviously remember the stuff with the brain scan earlier on in your career, have your lows come being linked with, with sport itself, or have they come away from boxing? 

RB: It's all been sport. It's all been boxing. Every low point in my life has been linked to boxing in some form, some shape or something. It's always been boxing. 

BS: How did you and Ricky first get on each other's radar, by the way, like in terms of you making the move to Manchester to, to train with him? 

RB: I think it was about 19 and I wanted to turn professional. I'd had enough of the amateur game, wanted to turn professional and I was saying to my dad, ‘Okay, we're going to reach out now and see, see what's about.’

Rick just was really attractive. He had an amazing career himself. He was a family man.

He was a young, he was a young coach and it just suited well. And I reached out to him and we got in contact and back and forth a couple of times and then eventually ended up working with him.

BS: Was it one of those where he takes you on the pads and you instantly gel?
RB: It's exactly what it was. This has actually happened to me twice, when I had a session with Ricky, I was hitting the pads and I was on it, I had to perform and I can remember letting a load of shots go on the pads and he just looked over at [assistant trainer] Mike Jackson as if like, ‘Geez, this kid's something.’ I just, I knew, ‘That's me. I've got it. I'm in.’ And then funny enough, the same thing happened when I ended up leaving Rick and went to Adam [Booth]. I was hitting the pads with Adam and I sort of had this look on his face. And after he gave me a Boxing Booth t-shirt.

BS: In boxing, you’re taught to not betray your emotions, to have that straight face and everything else. Obviously what we're talking about with mental health is where you've actually got to say, ‘I'm in trouble. I need help.’

RB: Boxers and fighters in general, they’re taught that you have to be hard. And you do have to be a really hard person and that image, a hard person overflows into your day to day life.

And I think that's where a lot of fighters and stuff, they get stuck. They feel for years, they're taught to be hard when you're hitting that bag and you feel like you're going to vomit, hold your shit together and keep going. That's what you're told and it overflows into life.

And I had the same thing. I was always taught, self-taught as well, to be hard and be that guy. And then it was when I retired, after a while, I said to myself, like, ‘I don't want to be hard anymore. I want to be soft.’ I don't want to be a violent person anymore. I just don't want to be like that anymore. So I sort of lowered my guard and accepted that it's okay. It's okay to be that little bit softer.

And if you do need to reach out and help and like, I've reached out and I've got help and that's, it's, it's all right. It doesn't change who you are and how people look at you. And it just means that you've took control of a really bad situation and how you're feeling instead of just bottling it up, bottling it up until it overflows.

You can donate to support Burnett here.