‘Cause all of the stars are fading away
Just try not to worry, you’ll see them someday
Take what you need, and be on your way
And stop crying our heart out
Stop crying your heart out – Oasis
I could see the hurt in Ricky Hatton’s eyes. We were pundits on a panel, Ricky, myself and former world cruiserweight champion Johnny Nelson, in the Sky Sports studio, to analyse the fight card topped by Erik Morales’ April 2011 bout with Marcos Maidana.
As the studio lights dimmed, they played a montage of Hatton’s highlights, the knockouts, the fans, Las Vegas, Manchester, and I could see heavy pools forming in Ricky’s eyes and his bottom lip start to quiver.
I didn’t say anything but, later in the evening, the cameras cut to the main event and I whispered to Ricky, “I bet you miss this bit.”
Looking longingly, lost in the monitors, he replied: “More than you will ever know.”
At the time, Ricky was in purgatory. He hadn’t officially retired after his two-round loss to Manny Pacquiao and I knew he’d been in the gym frantically trying to get the spark to return.
Much like a woodsman rubbing two sticks together attempting to raise a flame, he would train with his then-coach Bob Shannon hoping something inside of him would reignite.
It didn’t, and a few weeks later Ricky formally announced it was all over.
*
Ricky Hatton and his first professional coach, Billy Graham, were like mischievous school kids who were full-time students of boxing.
They took their work seriously, but there was plenty of fun along the way.
The early years went by rapidly. Ricky was often in camp and active.
He was boxing regularly but, even then, the pair shared experiences they should have laughed about into old age.
“Me and Billy used to say, ‘We’re gonna beat the best, and we’re gonna beat the best in the weight division’ and I think everyone used to think we were talking through our arses, to be honest with you,” Ricky smiled, seemingly content, long into retirement.
Whether it was the unpaid tab at the German hotel that saw them do a runner in the morning before the staff clocked-on for their shift, or causing a stir at Detroit’s famous Kronk Gym, they made memories.
When they arrived at Emanuel Steward’s school of the hardest knocks, they were amazed at how hot it was; with heaters cranked all the way up.
“Traditionally, it was a gym that was full of Black gentlemen, so I was like the Milky Bar Kid, pale white, as white as could be, I had a little basin haircut and I was on the bag going, ‘Argh, argh, argh,’ because when I used to punch I used to grunt with every shot,” Ricky recalled.
Before he knew it, Ricky was being mocked, and everyone on the bags was copying him, replicating his noises as they punched.
“I was intimidated, [but] then it was, ‘l’ll show you.’ ‘Get that bodybelt out, Billy. Let’s have a blast ‘ere.’”
The bodybelt was Ricky’s specialty.
Soon, the younger fighter and trainer had an audience with the others leaning against the ropes and moving in to pay much closer attention. The mocking stopped. Hardened pros and contenders gathered round, sensing something special.
“’Come on Ricky, quick bursts,’” urged “The Preacher.”
“Move round quicker, change the angles, finish on the jab when you punch, move your head.’”
With Billy eventually putting the bodybelt away, Ricky was surrounded.
“How are you doing, Ricky?”
“Ricky, is it?”
“How many fights have you had?”
“Respect.”
“Good luck on Saturday night.”
Winning the doubters over was nothing new to Ricky, and it was always a challenge he savoured.
A useless carpet fitter in his teens, he always said anyone who could have predicted his achievements when he first put on gloves at the age of 10 would have been “crackers.”
But Ricky’s success was not born from just being able to fight. It was his modesty, humility, and unpretentiousness. It was his willingness to put himself down to lift others up and his ability to have a pint with everyone in the pub.
Despite his incredible fame, he remained proud of his Manchester roots.
Ricky knew, later in life, that had he not burned the candle at both ends then he would have likely had a longer career. But he would never have changed it. Not for anything. Ricky was Ricky.
“Not a bit of it,” he said. “Now I’m a trainer, if they [his fighters] did what I did, I’ll wring their necks. But I wouldn’t change it for anything because I was the little runt, the little scally from Manchester, ‘Look at him, he’s losing three stone, look at him in the pub, look at him at the [football] match [where he sat amongst the fans], look at him with a pint and a Bovril,’ ‘We’ll go and watch him.’ Because I related to the fans that would come and watch me. I was just one of them. I wouldn’t change anything for the world.”
The fans were there en masse on June 4, 2005, in the early hours for US TV, at the MEN Arena, where Hatton scored his most magnificent win against Kostya Tszyu, who was withdrawn before the 12th round could start. It took place in front of a crowd so invested you could have closed your eyes and known what was happening.
“The dream is made real,” bellowed the iconic British commentator, Ian Darke, as Ricky and Billy sobbed in celebration.
“It’s like I’ll never wake up from the dream,” Ricky told me 15 years later. “I remember everything about it.”
The way he won also meant the world to him.
“To stop him [Tszyu], for him to be on his stool, even if I hit him with one of my bodyshots and knocked him out, it could never be as good as a formidable fighter like Kostya Tszyu sitting on his stool and going ‘No, no more, I’ve had enough.’”
That’s what happened.
Tszyu did not fight anymore that night. Tszyu never fought again.
**
In the Autumn of 2007, I visited Ricky and Billy at the Betta Bodies Gym – on the third floor of an old factory – where Billy’s Phoenix camp was based in Denton.
They were about seven weeks out from fighting Floyd Mayweather Jnr in Las Vegas and the pair had adopted a siege mentality.
As with the Tszyu fight, they knew people wanted Ricky to win, the people just didn’t believe he would win.
Conversely, there was nothing but belief in Ricky and Billy’s minds. Mayweather was just another Tszyu-like hill to scale; this time up at welterweight. It was a further chapter of the story they were writing together.
I watched Ricky working with Billy and then sat in the back office with Billy’s reptiles, snakes and iguanas and whatever else he kept there, to talk to them both.
Ricky did the famous bar-bag routine, alternating intervals between punching a bag and vaulting over a bar that was higher than Ricky’s waist.
Then, Billy strapped on his 15kg bodybelt and went to work.
“I hate this,” Graham smiled, waiting for Ricky to start tearing into him. And that is what Ricky did, sounding only like a chihuahua taking an issue with a bigger dog – with his, shall we say, Kronk grunting – but actually with the ferocity of feuding Rottweilers battling over a bloody steak.
It’s worth noting here, that Hatton was already an A-lister and nameless members of the public rolled in and pulled up chairs to watch with Ricky greeting each one of them.
Later, after a pain-staking photoshoot for a national paper, we went for a cup of tea in the gym’s café.
Ricky and Billy felt certain of their destiny. They were incredibly pleasant and gave me whatever time I needed, but felt frustrated by the lack of coverage they had received.
It was not to the point of distraction, however. They were fixed on the main goal.
“Not only a world title and to be champion for a second time at the weight above, but I have the chance to be the best pound-for-pound fighter walking the face of the earth,” Ricky stated. “And that’s all going through my mind. That and the fact I know I can do it.
As our conversation continued, Ricky told me how he’d always been motivated by the lazy knocks that he was just a ticket-seller, that he’d been overprotected on the way up, and he was proud when his opponents later declared that they’d been taken aback by his strategic intelligence and accuracy.
What Ricky said did not come from a place of bluster. His feet were firmly on the ground, but his gaze was only on being recognized as the best fighter in the world.
It was Mayweather, really, who was the best. The boxers had by then completed a media tour that saw them visit Los Angeles, Michigan, London and Manchester.
The fighters were so vastly different that anytime they were together, there was unintentional magic.
Ricky was not overly impressed by what he saw.
“I’m sure there probably is another side to Floyd,” he said, with a pause. “If there is, I haven’t seen it yet.”
One of the main things Rick and Billy talked about that day was how important the referee would be on that ridiculously atmospheric night in Las Vegas, when the Brits rolled in and took the city by storm.
Mayweather had protested that Hatton would cheat to get an advantage.
“I keep hearing all that and think that’s fear in him; saying I hold and I’m a dirty fighter,” Ricky said, spitting defiance. “He’s making excuses already. It’s a work of art being able to inside fight.”
Then, as if addressing Joe Cortez directly, Hatton added: “If either one of us is holding, break us. Don’t just break us the minute we get at close quarters. I think Floyd wants to get in the referee’s mind that I’m a dirty fighter… I just hope the referee’s strong enough. If we’re working in close, let us work.”
Their 13-week camp wrapped up and I spoke to Ricky a final time before he left for Sin City. There was only optimism and belief in his voice.
“I can do it, I know I can do it,” he said.
***
Ricky didn’t do it.
Cortez did the complete opposite of what Ricky and Billy had hoped, urgently breaking the fighters at every opportunity.
Ricky was dropped twice, stopped, and beaten for the first time in his career.
He cracked a few one-liners in the aftermath, but some major internal cracks began to develop.
I had been left to put together the coverlines at Boxing News the week before the bout and I’d headlined the issue ‘England expects’.
When I asked editor Claude Abrams what he made of it, he raised his eyebrows.
“Do we really expect?”
We did not really expect, but a nation hoped.
Ricky and Billy got it right. Britain had wanted a Hatton victory. Britain had not expected a Hatton victory.
By the time Ricky returned, the momentum of his previous 43 fights was gone and his psyche dented. He’d been able to walk through the fire in his relentless pursuit of being the best, but it all came crashing down in Vegas.
The frustration at Cortez was part of it, but the loss, the stoppage, the feeling of letting down some 25,000 travelling fans (read it again, 25,000 fans travelled 8,500 kilometers west, from the UK to the Nevada desert) hurt him irreparably.
Ricky had felt he was bulletproof. He thought he could do what he did to Kostya Tszyu to anyone; walk them down, make them suffer until he either stops them or they quit.
“When I was young, I could walk through walls…” he told me once. “They used to bounce off me at the time.”
That was no longer the case, nor would it ever be again.
Instead, he papered over the cracks. He parted company with Billy, was soon working with Mayweather Snr, and while his win over Juan Lazcano – in front of 50,000 at Manchester City’s Ethiad Stadium – was hard fought, the job he did on Paulie Malignaggi presented many with the illusion that the Ricky of before the Mayweather fight was back.
Not only that, but Ricky’s next monster fight would be at 140lbs, his domain, and against Manny Pacquiao. Ricky felt that if he defeated the Filipino, it would make amends for the Mayweather loss, letting down his fans and those who watched but who had wound up disappointed. That was another burden he carried, by the way. Ricky’s fanbase was incredible – his greatest triumph – but his enthusiasm to super-serve them was costly, both inside the ring and outside the ropes.
Ahead of the Pacquiao fight, I remember talking to Ricky down a long corridor inside London’s War Museum. I noticed a subconscious change, and I knew he wanted to win, but I’m not sure he believed he would.
The Pacquiao camp, run by Mayweather Snr, was a disaster. Ricky was overtrained and emotionally empty.
Pacquiao laid him out in two rounds.
The manner of the defeat was spectacularly bad for Ricky. There was no disgrace in losing to Pacquiao, who in his next fight would batter Miguel Cotto, but Ricky felt shame and embarrassment.
Despite taking thousands upon thousands to Vegas for both super-fights, and for Juan Urango and Jose Luis Castillo, Ricky could not view his own success through a positive prism; the way so many others did.
For example, on vacation and back in Vegas once with Jennifer, mother of his two daughters, he was informed by an MGM executive his money was no good.
“We never took as much money as we did on the Ricky Hatton-Floyd Mayweather fight week, and whether it was over the bar or in the casino, as long as you’re in this hotel, you won’t have to pay for anything or any ticket,” Ricky was told.
That was always surreal to Ricky.
“Maybe in your hometown, in Manchester,” he shrugged. “But not halfway across the world in Vegas. For the kid from a Hattersley council estate… That’s an achievement in itself.”
The likes of Russell Crowe, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Jack Nicholson were ringside regulars for Ricky.
When Ricky left Vegas, the whole place seemed to have a headache having partied so hard attempting to keep up with the boy from Hyde and his travelling army of supporters.
It wasn’t just beer cans left scattered in car parks; it was entire kegs that were strewn through the city. There was not enough Guinness to keep up with demand. Even now, nearly two decades on, in the gyms, in the Ubers, in the hotels, Vegas residents will cheerfully beam about Ricky Hatton and his fans “drinking the bars dry.”
When Ricky left Vegas, Vegas needed to recover.
That is not lore. That is fact. Despite the results, everyone left happy. Every time.
Or so you’d hope.
The truth was that Ricky struggled.
The man of the people battled in a lonely darkness and things were going from bad to worse. His split with Billy was going legal, and that triggered a huge rift with his family. Then came a Sunday newspaper headline of Ricky in a hotel with cocaine and £20 note.
Everything hit at once; compounded by the Pacquaio devastation.
Just three fights before, he was telling me how he knew he could beat Floyd Mayweather. Now he was looking at retirement. He couldn’t bring himself to watch boxing.
“It’s gone. It’s gone forever,” he thought to himself. “It’s just going to be shit from here on in.”
He could not snap the negative spiralling.
“Once that depression gets hold of you, it doesn’t matter how tough you are, how many fights you’ve had or what you’ve got in the world; you’re struggling.”
The man who could put anyone at ease felt on edge. His fans still loved him but he no longer loved himself.
The newspaper sting really bothered him. He’d spent years cultivating his image.
“His world fell apart,” his manager and friend Paul Speak told me.
“People said I was doing myself a disservice but they don’t have to live with this little fella who sits on your shoulder every day saying, ‘You fucked that up, you knobhead.’ ‘You led us to believe you were good with your fans and good with your family… You’re a fucking fraud,’” Ricky told me in the aftermath. “And that’s what I live with every day.”
He wanted his community, his sport and his city to be proud of him.
They were, but he didn’t know or feel it.
In his own words, he was “a very, very poorly person.”
“My head was not right and I had it for a few years,” he said. “It was a really difficult time for me.”
He drank. He isolated. He contemplated suicide. He went to rehab.
“What did I do to this world to have it fucking happen to me, this whole weight that seems to have fallen on my shoulders?” he once asked me.
He felt he’d lost the equity he’d built.
“I’ve always had time for people, I’ve never turned a picture down, and I think that’s why I had the support I did and I think because of that everyone’s had their picture now so I’m alright to go out… I’d like to think there’s not too many people out there who’ve come across me, or asked me for a picture, who’d call me a dickhead. I’ve had my moments over the years, and I’ve had some down times, but all in all, I think I’m a good egg.”
“Hatton needs our support,” I wrote in Boxing News in 2010, and the day before he formally announced his retirement in 2011, he called and said of hanging the gloves up: “I still don’t want to believe it to this day.”
Ricky started posting on social media, and was shocked at how he could be attacked by those he hoped loved him.
It gave strangers a direct route to get at him, and could exacerbate his misery.
After posting a picture of himself with Jennifer and baby daughter, Millie, having Sunday lunch, someone replied: “Why don’t you just get AIDS and die, you fat bastard?”
Trolls were one thing, but the thought of being an ex-fighter and losing his identity was more terrifying than Mayweather and Pacquiao combined.
****
As 2012 went on, Ricky found himself back in the gym and his weight started to drop. Still only 33, he kept it quiet but started to think, “There might be something here.”
The comeback was on.
Typical Ricky, he signed to fight Vyacheslav Senchenko, a world-rated Ukrainian, rather than take a warm-up.
Pacquiao had been more than three years earlier, and Ricky had morphed from man of the people – which he still was – to mental health ambassador. A wave of positivity surged through him, and there was talk of big fights with big-name rivals.
More than any of that, however, Ricky felt he was fighting to redeem himself in the eyes of the public.
“People forgive you,” he told me. “If they see you’re making an effort they will believe in you.
“When my daughter [Millie] was born [last October], I wanted her to be proud of her dad. I didn’t want people saying to her, ‘Cor, your dad was successful but he made a right balls up of it in the end.’ I want them to say, ‘Your dad, what a fighter he was.’ ‘He had a few problems, but boy did he come back.’”
His close friends and family watched and hoped.
“I was there through it all,” Speak told me before the Senchenko fight. “I was on the canvas with him when he fought Pacquiao… and we’re all going to be biting our fingernails… It's not just about the boxing, it’s about getting into a good place and he’s happy. He’s back.”
Ricky stole himself for the most emotional ringwalk of his career, back at the Manchester Arena that was synonymous with his rise.
“But if it doesn’t go to plan – and there’s every chance it might not go to plan although I think it will, you’ve always got to plan for the worst – I can still come back to the gym, train my fighters, do my promoting and say I can live with that,” he told me on the eve of the contest.
It was not the fighting talk I was hoping for, and I wrote in my fight preview: “Regardless of what happens, the final chapter is being played out of Ricky Hatton’s storied career. But this is a fight for redemption and ultimately his success might well not be measured by what he achieves inside the ring, but how he copes once the ropes are no longer there to protect him from the outside world.”
*****
There was both no worse and no more contrasting way to go out.
Known for his body-punching, sell-out crowds, his fans and their deafening chorus of “Walking in a Hatton Wonderland”, Ricky had been stopped by a bodyshot, in his fortress MEN Arena and to a crowd silenced to the extent that you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. It was surreal, although that doesn’t do the moment justice.
His fans pleaded with him to get up until the referee counted to about seven.
“I’m sorry guys, I can’t,” he thought to himself.
A forlorn silence fell upon the arena.
When he eventually made it to his feet and trudged backstage, he did so to a heartfelt round of applause and his fans erupted in a sympathetic and emotional verse once more.
I sat with him, just he and I, in his dressing room after the fight.
He put his hands on his dressing room table and looked at himself in the mirror.
“Oh well, it’s just not there anymore, is it?” he said. “I was crying in the ring and no doubt I’ll go home and cry tonight.”
As sad as he was, the acceptance was something he needed. The Senchenko bodyshot was the full stop. It closed off the career. No more questions. Job done. Be proud of all you accomplished. It’s time to write the next chapter.
I thought about the raucous crowds, a highlight reel went through my head, the Castillo body shot, the war with Thaxton, the Maussa hook, him rolling around on the floor with Billy after Tszyu, the brief reinvention with Floyd Snr, it flashed before me and there was Ricky, pale, swollen, lumpy, but satisfied.
He finally had the answers.
It wasn’t that simple, though. Those almighty highs were a drug and too powerful to be weaned off. He would give the future lip service, but nothing could replace what had gone before and he kept a foot in the past. He missed the halcyon days and who wouldn’t?
We cannot even imagine what it was like. We couldn’t dream. We couldn’t do it. Ricky lived it. It was his life.
The day after the Senchenko fight, Ricky was among the fans at a City match, and a day after that, his right eye still closed, he was training his boxers in the gym.
“So he lost the fight,” I wrote afterwards. “He might even lose a few more out of the ring. But there is one that is far bigger than boxing, and now he can focus on that.”
******
There was a long period where Ricky seemed in control of his demons. Sure, his weight would fluctuate, he still liked a drink, but he was a passionate mental health advocate. He would unite with the likes of Tyson Fury and Frank Bruno and implore others to seek help if they need it, to stay in the fight.
So much of what Ricky said is so prophetic now he has gone.
The Ricky who I spent months with, writing his autobiography, was one in turmoil. The one I later enjoyed my time with was unshackled, freed by his need for help and support, and loved as part of the brotherhood of boxing.
Like so many others, I can say I enjoyed some big nights out with Ricky. In 2014, at the WBC convention in Las Vegas, we were out with Joe Calzaghe and British heavyweight Scott Welch. I remember that night ruined me so much I was bed-bound when I got home in the build-up to Christmas, while looking at Ricky on social media, right as rain. He was making people laugh while holding court at his speaking engagements as I struggled to hold down food, courtesy of one night out with him several days earlier.
Ten years later, the night of Ricky’s induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Ricky messaged me to join him and Marco Antonio Barrera at the Turning Stone Casino. I went along, and soon after there were tables full of bottles and shot glasses. The night descended, as you might expect, and I remember laughing so much my cheeks were sore.
There was a moment where Barrera – who carried Ricky’s belts to the ring for some of his major fights, boxed Ricky in a 2022 exhibition and who flew to Canastota to spend five days with Ricky for his induction – and Hatton went arm in arm to neck shots. Then, as the drink flowed, Ricky saw Barrera’s top button coming undone and he moved in to hug the great Mexican, but instead put his head on Barrera’s chest. Barrera looked at me quizzically, and Hatton proceeded to motorboat (google it, if you need to) in Barrera’s chest, and Barrera burst into laughter.
The pleasure they had in one another’s company, despite occasional language and accent barriers, was a joy to see.
The following day, by the time I arrived in New York’s JFK airport, Ricky had messaged me, thanking me for being there.
“Dream come true. Hall of Famer. Doesn’t get any better,” he said.
******
“Why don’t you go to the house and let yourself in? Ricky smiled.
He threw his house keys to me.
“Go and set up and I’ll be there in an hour.”
Ricky Hatton went about his business and trained his fighters in the gym, while my camera man and I went to Ricky’s beautiful home to get our equipment ready to record a podcast.
None of that is said flippantly. Ricky Hatton is one of the most famous men in Britain and he had tossed his keys to me and told me to go and unlock his home and make it mine.
This, however, does not leave me feeling quite as special as you might think. Years ago, Ed Robinson, a Sky Sports Boxing mainstay, told me that on the day of a fight they pulled up at Ricky’s former home to film only to find Ricky heading to his local store to buy sweets. He asked the Sky team what confectionery they’d like and told them to go in the house and put the kettle on.
What star athlete or celebrity does that?
Ricky’s accessibility and relatability set him apart from his peers on the A-list. It was his humble charm that saw him turn his idols into fans.
As news of Ricky’s passing spread on Sunday, September 14, the Manchester derby between Ricky’s beloved City and bitter rivals United came to an emotional standstill in his honour. The likes of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Liam Gallagher had already paid tribute to Ricky but, equally importantly, so did Ricky’s favourite City player, the underrated Georgian wizard Georgi Kinkladze, his fighting hero Roberto Duran, and his legendary friend Barrera.
Barrera posted twice. “Always my brother” and “My closest friend in boxing,” wrote the Mexican great.
Duran echoed those sentiments. “Ricky was more than a great champion, he was a true brother.”
Hatton has great stories of being in Panama with Duran, and of Duran even being waved through passport control without having to show ID on account of being Roberto Duran, but the vicious Panamanian was actually Ricky’s dream opponent.
In Ricky’s house, once he came back for the interview where we had set up in his absence, I asked him if he could have fought any great who would it have been.
“I would say Roberto Duran, because Roberto Duran was my hero, and it would always be nice to share the ring with my hero just so you could see how good your hero actually was,” Ricky smiled. “And if you’re asking me how I think it would go, I think he’d fill me in.”
********
For Ricky, it was Oasis, a brew, Manchester City and a Guinness. It was Blue Moon, boxing and a full English breakfast. It was holidays in Tenerife, spending time with his friends and wearing shit shirts. It was the simplest pleasure that made him happiest and gave him the most comfort.
Manchester City was in his blood.
On that horrible Sunday earlier this month, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola fought back tears, but thousands could not.
Ricky passed his City passion down to his son, Campbell, who I remember as a small boy kicking a football around in Ricky’s back garden pretending he was the great City midfielder Yaya Toure.
Since then, Campbell’s own career as a pro has come and gone, and Ricky had not initially wanted him to fight. But he saw Campbell’s passion and persistence and later told me, “He loves it, and I think he can do a bit, you know?”
Then, after Campbell had scored a bodyshot finish just like Ricky used to, I messaged Ricky, “Bloody hell, I know it’s been said about a chip off the block, but…”
“Yeah mate,” Ricky replied. “Bit by bit he’s getting there.”
Then, typical Ricky, he would acknowledge a recent social media post or say, “You all good?”
Ricky also routinely called me “my mate.”
I know he did that to a lot of people, but it didn’t feel like that when he said it to you. It ring-fenced you as someone special. It made you Ricky Hatton’s mate.
And there were thousands of us.
He was far more concerned with making us all smile than finding his own.
We loved his self-deprecating humour. He was as comfortable making himself the butt of any joke as he was walking to the ring in front of a stadium full of passionate supporters. He loved Only Fools and Horses, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Fawlty Towers, Bernard Manning and, of course, City. He was cheeky, ballsy, and was as fast with his wit as he was his left to the body.
Calling him funny does not do him justice. He had the timing and delivery of a skilled comic.
Around 2010, Ricky was considering suicide regularly. By 2021, he told me he was delighted that he had not because of everything he’d been able to enjoy. Add that to the present day, and Ricky – aged 46 when the unimaginable happened – wouldn’t have met his granddaughter, Lyla, he wouldn’t have seen Oasis reunite, or Manchester City win the treble, or been present for his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and Campbell’s entire 16-fight pro career.
Those are enough amazing things to sustain someone for a lifetime.
His dread of life after boxing and reluctance to step into the next phase prevented him from fully embracing it.
His words about mental health and seeking help should echo into eternity. They should not be lost.
When I was first messaged with the news that Sunday morning, I didn’t believe it was true. I didn’t want it to be true.
Through the tears on Sunday night, I read some of our old interviews, rewatched some of our old conversations. I heard his voice. I heard him laugh. I was close to him again.
I re-read the interview from the Betta Bodies gym, the one filled with hope and excitement that built into the Mayweather fighter. That one where he said: “I’m going to do it, I know I can.”
Ricky, you did do it, mate. You made it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Millions adored you and an impact like yours will never happen again.
There is only one, Ricky Hatton. That is all we ever needed.
A sport and a nation have been grieving since Ricky left us. He was found at his home, The Heartbreak – named after the Heartbreak Hotel – and that is how he left the nation and the sport; heartbroken. He was isolated at his darkest moment yet left thousands feeling empty and too many completely desolate.
But, finally, the inner-torment was over and Ricky was at peace.
Ricky was a one off, a once in a lifetime fighter and person.
They only come along like Ricky Hatton once in a Blue Moon.
So many will miss Ricky, the same way he missed fighting – in his words – more than he will ever know.
‘Cause all of the stars are fading away
Just try not to worry, you’ll see them someday
Take what you need, and be on your way
And stop crying our heart out
Stop crying your heart out – Oasis
