Steps are being taken to build the foundation set up in the name of the late Ricky Hatton.
After the two-weight world champion took his own life last month, the Ricky Hatton Foundation has been set up to help others.
The non-profit organization is being run in part by Jon Eade, who worked alongside Hatton at his gym in Hyde, Manchester, UK, for several years.
Eade now lives in Dubai and installs digital boxing solutions in gyms around the Middle East, helping gym goers navigate their experience with screen-led programs. Eade had spoken to Hatton in the past about setting up a similar foundation.
“I was speaking to Rick about this probably 12, 18 months ago,” said Eade. “I’ve had a couple of conversations, because I kept saying to him, ‘Look, mental health, especially in males, is a massive problem, and I don’t think there’s anyone better, really, to talk to the working class, normal blokes that find it really difficult to reach out, better than you. And you talk so openly about it. Why don't we try and set up something like a foundation?’”
Hatton was all for it, but the former champion also juggled being a father, a grandfather, a manager, a trainer and a gym owner who was a regular after-dinner speaker. He was also due to box again in Dubai in December.
“Sounds good,” Hatton would say.
But Eade knew that in order to roll it out, Hatton would have to be available for a sustained period of time, and although he was keen, his diary remained clogged.
“It was just never the right time,” Eade lamented.
Eade was due to see Hatton in Dubai on the Sunday as news of Hatton’s passing spread, and in the first week afterward, Eade felt moved to speak to several of Hatton’s confidants to set up his foundation.
“We’ve got to do something about this,” he said.
“We’ve got to try and use this in some good way. I don’t think there’s any sporting person in the UK that's better than championing this than Ricky would have been. So I met with [Ricky’s son] Campbell, met with Jen [mother of Ricky’s two daughters], met with Speaky [Hatton’s manager Paul Speak] again and I said, ‘Look, this is what I think that we should do.’
The Ricky Hatton Foundation was established, and the first phase has been about awareness and raising funds. But the second part is a more significant undertaking.
“It’s actually quite a big beast,” Eade acknowledged. “Because I don’t want the foundation to be a crisis management helpline. I don’t want it just to be where people text ‘MATE’ or something like that to a number, and then someone reaches out, because the research and everything out there shows that that’s not doing enough. We want to try and get to people before they get to that point. We’re looking at initiatives in terms of providing education to kids in schools – but using maybe community sports programs for that, whether it’s football, whether it’s cricket, whether it’s boxing, supporting amateur boxing clubs and coaches with mental health, first aid knowledge.
“We want to do a big piece around educating the other person. So if you call me up now and say, ‘Look, I’m really struggling,’ I’ve got to know what that means for me to be able to help you, because blokes typically go, ‘Oh mate, you’ll be all right. Have a couple of beers and you’ll be fine.’ So we want to put some education behind that, doing a lot of work with some mental health specialists who are ex-athletes as well.”
Eade has been on the phone a lot since Hatton’s passing, researching similar foundations, working on strategy documents. A focus will be on helping sportsmen and sportswomen transition into retirement, arming them with support and information to assist them.
Eade has seen first-hand fighters start their career convinced they will be world champions without having a Plan B in place.
“You’ve got to have that self-belief, but when it doesn’t happen, the whole world crumbles down because they just weren’t prepared for it in any way whatsoever,” Eade said.
And even those who do make it are often not sustained by money and fame. The void of the fight, of high-level sport, is not filled.
“We also have to start preparing them that there is gonna be a moment where they’re not gonna walk out in front of 20,000 people at Manchester Arena or something like that,” Eade added. “There is a coping mechanism. They’ve got to be able to fill that gap. Sport is going to be the main vehicle that we’re going to try and use. We’d love to do something in boxing for the fighters because that’s what Ricky, I think, genuinely deep down would really love to have as a legacy – that there’s some support there for boxers. But sport is a great way to get blokes to have conversations and talk. And we’re going to use sport to reach people. So whether that’s young kids and educating them through community clubs … but also we want to put golf days and Padel events and stuff like that on where we can try and get some messages across about this, the other side of understanding what it’s about.”
While Eade is now working around the clock to set up the foundation, he is also coping with losing a friend. He and Hatton were close, and together they had rolled out a fitness program that resulted in coaches up and down the UK earning a boxing qualification from Hatton’s gym.
News of Hatton’s passing hit Eade hard.
“It was unbelievable because I’d spoken to Speaky on the Saturday and he’d phoned me up because they were coming here to Dubai that night, and we were doing a press conference on the Monday. … I just couldn’t believe it. And then even at the funeral … I couldn’t quite get my head around it.”
Eade still has trouble finding the words, but he takes solace knowing that, even with just 46 years under his belt, Hatton lived a full life – and one he largely enjoyed.
“I’ll never forget,” Eade recalled. “We went to do a boxing workshop, me and him, in Kent. On the way back, we got stuck in between two junctions. There was an accident, and we were there for 14 hours in between these two junctions. It was a nightmare. So I was chatting to him. We were talking about loads of stuff, and I said to him, ‘Mate, do you wish you could do it all over again?’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘If I could give back everything I’ve got – my money, everything, everything I’ve achieved – I’d do it tomorrow.’”
Hatton’s passing has left so many shocked and mourning, and Eade wants to help others at risk. He knows he has a huge task ahead of him.
From a period of darkness for Eade and so many close to Hatton, he hopes light may emerge for others.
“I just thought, let’s try and do something good,” he said.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
