By the time Ricky Hatton walked to the ring for his super fight with Floyd Mayweather in December 2007 he had been backed more heavily at the bookies than any individual British sportsman ever had.
Little over 24 hours earlier when he stepped on to the scales at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand he did so in front of a crowd of 6,000 that had queued for up to eight hours to attend and create the intimidating atmosphere that contributed to what appeared to be Mayweather being unnerved.
Interest was such that tickets for the fight at the 16,459-capacity MGM Grand Garden Arena sold out within 30 minutes of going on sale, and despite only 3,900 of those being made available in the UK, estimates vary that between 20,000-30,000 (it is likely some of those were already based in California) British fight fans made the journey to Vegas when so many knew they had so little chance of being present on the night.
BBC Radio 5 Live had recorded a preview programme for the most memorable fight of the year. Freddie Roach, Bernard Hopkins and Oscar De La Hoya – Mayweather’s previous opponent – contributed and each predicted that Hatton would win.
Hatton lost for the first time that evening when being stopped 10 rounds into a both entertaining and world-stopping contest. As against Manny Pacquiao two years later he didn’t succeed in his ambition of defeating the world’s finest active fighter, but – as he recognised countless times in retirement – as was demonstrated in the way that his supporters chanted his name before, during and immediately after those two defeats, he had established the most loyal and passionate following the boxing world has ever seen.
One of the tragedies of a both sudden-and-premature death is the reality that the relevant individual often dies without knowing what he or she meant to the world and those closest to them. Hatton – an increasingly tortured soul perhaps from as early as the defeat by Mayweather – was regularly given reason to recognise what he had come to mean to his home city of Manchester, the people of Britain who took such pride in his achievements, and the boxing community as a whole, and yet rarely truly appeared to know.
“He was my absolute hero,” Scotland’s Josh Taylor, who succeeded him as a junior-welterweight world champion from Britain, said on the day that he was found dead at his home in Greater Manchester. “Today we lost a friend, a mentor, a warrior,” said Amir Khan, another junior-welterweight champion from the UK.
If Taylor and Khan had taken inspiration from Hatton, their careers were also enhanced by his success in the era before theirs. In the years after Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed had retired British boxing was struggling for a focal point and an identity and Hatton – with the strongest of identities that had been nurtured by his trainer Billy Graham – not only seized both but redefined it in a way that continues to be felt today.
Hatton’s existence, like so many of the few others who burn so brightly before burning out entirely, came exactly when it was capable of having its greatest impact. He unconsciously built on the earlier influence of Oasis and Manchester United’s Class of ’92 at a time when the UK was considerably less divided and when the success of Oasis, Manchester United and more threatened to make his home city of Manchester the centre of the world.
The victory over Kostya Tszyu in 2005 represented the realisation of the promise he had increasingly demonstrated and remains one of the most celebrated of any British fighter. It also, for the first time, meant him reshaping the boxing landscape beyond the UK.
There remain those close to Mayweather who continue to consider the fight with Hatton to be the most memorable of one of the very greatest careers. From as early as their infancy as fighters Graham had identified that the day would come when Hatton and Mayweather would collide.
When Mayweather so masterfully defeated De La Hoya in 2007 he succeeded De La Hoya as the world’s highest-profile fighter and leaned even more heavily on his “Money” persona. The ferocious, fearless Hatton – the working-class hero who grew up living in and learning to box in the basement of a pub – was not only the nature of opponent the public could realistically buy into threatening the world’s most polished boxer, he was the perfect human antidote to rival a cold character who was equally brash and flash.
There has perhaps never been a series of 24/7 that intensified interest in a fight to the same degree as Mayweather-Hatton, one awarded two Emmys for its depiction of the man-child Mayweather in his luxurious mansion and his curious habit of training surrounded by sycophants in the dead of night and of Hatton the showman in the chain-smoking Graham’s Denton-based, cramped, modest Phoenix Camp gym.
It is partly for that reason that Hatton was so widely financially and emotionally supported by his compatriots, and largely why a fight week in Vegas – despite higher-grossing fights since being staged there – hasn’t since again looked or sounded quite the same.
Hatton – and he later confided in those close to him that he regretted doing so – separated from Graham the following summer after the victory over Juan Lazcano that attracted a post-war British record crowd of 55,000 to the City of Manchester Stadium, and it is tempting to conclude that neither he nor Graham ever truly recovered from their split.
A whole when previously together, Hatton and Graham – torn apart partly by the fame and finance that followed their success – endured their separate battles with their mental health and alcohol abuse. Graham, full of resentment for the way he considered himself to have been treated by those around Hatton, was later regardless crushed to watch the fighter he remained so invested in get stopped by the destructive Pacquiao in 2009 and then make an ill-advised, unsuccessful comeback against Vyacheslav Senchenko in 2012.
That so much of a national treasure’s struggles had unfolded in the public eye – and that Hatton came to speak so openly about his suicidal thoughts – contributed to the near-unrivalled atmosphere on the night of Hatton-Senchenko at the Manchester Arena where seven years earlier Tszyu was forced to retire. A loyal crowd not only willed him to succeed in the way that it had against Tszyu, Mayweather, Pacquiao and others – it feared, in the new-found knowledge of his vulnerability, the consequences of another crushing defeat.
When Hatton went down that night from a body shot like one of those he threw in his prime a deafening silence instantly filled the arena. Those present were paralysed by an almost tangible fear that their greatest concerns were about to be realised – that the faded, once-seemingly-indestructible champion was about to suffer again.
What seemed the slowest of 10 counts started; the previous hush was eventually followed by a desperate hope and audible encouragement for him to return to his feet. He made it to a knee before again collapsing to the canvas. His bravery in battling his demons couldn’t take him to a victory where it most mattered to him – in the ring.
He was, by then, not only estranged from Graham but also from his parents. As he lay on the canvas attempting to recover to the strains of Hatton Wonderland – his supporters started to chant almost immediately after he was counted out – he was one of Britain’s most popular figures but would rarely have felt more alone.
In retirement Hatton was reunited with his former trainer and also with his parents. If doing so went someway to repairing two of his biggest wounds, the scars – like those on his face sustained in battle – never disappeared and, even by the wit and sense of mischief that often previously defined him, were rarely hidden even when he attempted to wear his bravest face.
It was that authenticity and that vulnerability that made Hatton – the most emotional of fighters – the most human of sportspeople; that made it possible for so many to identify with him, and that even more than his talents as a fighter made the greatest impression on the world.
When he entered an exhibition with Marco Antonio Barrera in 2022 and announced a professional comeback earlier in 2025 he again gave cause for concern to those who cared most about him. But even the most dangerous of professions at times seemed safer for Hatton than the challenges he had little choice but to confront beyond it; he was supposed to attend a fight on Saturday evening and his absence was what led to police being called to his home and finding him dead, aged 46, the following day.
It was once reflected that his intense fighting style guaranteed that he couldn’t expect a lengthy career. With the benefit of hindsight, when those observations were made they could very easily have been describing the way that he functioned without a fight to prepare for or an opponent in mind.
Graham sometimes questioned how the most full-blooded of fighters could fearlessly execute the highest-risk and most violent of tactics and yet, beyond the ring, accept injustice to avoid the low-key confrontations he might otherwise have encountered. Perhaps it was Hatton’s fate, in retirement, to never truly find a place of contentment. Perhaps it was also Hatton’s fate to reach his peak at a time when British boxing and the city of Manchester needed him to. When Graham, as a trainer, was also at his.
When HBO Boxing was committed to the 24/7 series he ignited; when Mayweather required a rivalry that meant thousands travelling to Vegas from Britain to be present and – despite their fight being at 5am in the UK – a record 1.2m pay-per-views being sold and therefore many millions more buying into his dream.
“So sad to hear,” said Pat Lynch, the then-manager of the late Arturo Gatti – once a potential opponent for Hatton and one who once burned similarly bright. “I brought [Hatton] to Arturo’s suite the morning of the Mayweather fight and the two of them spoke for over an hour.
“Talking like they knew each other forever.
“Now both are gone. May they rest in peace.”
