War and PeaceMy Story

by Ricky Hatton

  Back in the midst of the action, Floyd was starting to look for that right hand to the body and the jab up top, while the check hook that had nearly got me a round or two earlier just missed again. He was trying to time me with it. Then, as I came forward trying to jab him, he did just that. He arced the hook perfectly, and it sent me crashing head first into the corner post and onto the canvas. My legs had gone. Totally.

  I scrambled back up and tried to fight on but knew it was all over. I’d never give up. You’d have to nail me to the canvas to lose but when I got up my legs had gone and were disobeying me. It was only through discipline and heart that I was able to briefly stand with Floyd one last time, but he managed to bundle me over a second time and Cortez stopped it.

  Devastated wasn’t the word. I just lay there, on my back, looking up. I wasn’t hurt. I was just numb. I had lost for the first time. And I’d been knocked out. It’s hard to explain what goes through your mind at a moment like that. Not only was it my first defeat but it was my first stoppage defeat. I was so disappointed. Beyond heartbroken. There was no doubt I had thought I was going to win the fight at the start.

  Floyd hit the deck and was praying. He knew he’d had a hard fight. It was a light-welterweight against a welterweight and I was soon up and talking. It wasn’t a brutal end. I was just pissed off. More damage was done to my pride than my face by the punches that ended it. There were a lot of tears at ringside; my family and Jennifer were in bits.

  The crowd had been amazing and they remained that way. They were brilliant throughout my career, and not even Mayweather could shut them up as they still belted out ‘Walking in a Hatton Wonderland’.

  ‘Ricky Hatton is one tough fighter,’ Floyd said afterwards in the ring. ‘He’s still a champion in my eyes. He’s one of the toughest competitors I ever faced. He kept coming, took some shots and big body shots but he kept coming.’

  Larry Merchant, HBO’s veteran broadcaster, then came to me. ‘What a fluke that was,’ I joked, and the fans laughed with me. Larry asked me a number of questions and I gave several sporting responses. It’s actually quite easy when they put a mike under your mouth like that. You’ve just got to go through the motions and say the right thing.

  At the end of the interview I did something I had never done before. I apologized to the fans and everyone I had let down. The million-plus people back home who had paid fifteen pounds to see it live on SKY Box Office in the United Kingdom, staying up until five in the morning to watch, and the thirty-or-so thousand who had invaded Vegas. I apologized to those who had always been with me or recently followed my story. I apologized to everyone. ‘I’m sorry everybody. Thank you,’ I said.

  I got into the changing room and cried my eyes out.

  I was never the same man again.

  Later that night me, my brother, Matthew – who had won on the undercard – Matthew Macklin, Jennifer and a few of my mates went out for some drinks. Jennifer went off to bed, but I wanted to stay out and drink more. I’d trained so hard and normally when you finish a fight you would sup a load of beer, go around the bars, spend time with the fans and that night they made me dead proud. ‘Oh Ricky, you did great. You didn’t let us down,’ they were all saying. I stayed out late and then went staggering through the bedroom door of the apartment the next morning.

  That day, it was BBC Sports Personality of the Year back in England. So after drowning my sorrows I came back at half-nine in the morning, bleary-eyed to say the least, and Jennifer was sat at the table putting on her make-up. I muttered, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘It’s the Sports Personality of the Year over in the arena in less than an hour because of the time difference.’ I protested I couldn’t go, but she sorted me out with Red Bulls and coffees and there was me, Joe Calzaghe, Lennox Lewis and a few others, and we were sat in the front row. I was still steaming – it was a nightmare. I came third; perhaps it would have been different had I beaten Mayweather, but Joe Calzaghe, who was out there talking up a fight with Bernard Hopkins, won it courtesy of his unification win over Mikkel Kessler.

  It says something about how big my fight with Floyd was that the Spice Girls, who were on their comeback tour, had been scheduled to play at the MGM Grand until Floyd and I took the date. They ended up having to move their gig down The Strip to the Mandalay Bay. David Beckham, husband of Posh Spice, Victoria, had invited me to the show the day after the Mayweather fight, and he let me and Matthew use his box to watch them that night. Me and Matthew piled in there, Jennifer and Jenna were still getting ready, and you can’t take the council estate out of the man, can you? I saw a bar in the box and I said, ‘Come on, Matthew, there’s free beer back here.’

  We were stood by the balcony and at the back of the room there were some big, comfy settees, so me and Matthew staggered in, and there was a bloke lying on them with his feet up, and a woman was lying next to him. We hurried past like two naughty schoolkids, barely looking up, and said ‘All right?’ And they went, ‘Oh yeah, how are you doing?’

  Matthew took a quick glance at them and said, ‘Why don’t you relax a little bit and put your fucking feet up?’

  Me and Matthew got to the balcony looking over the Mandalay Bay Events Center and I turned round, quickly spun back to check and looked back out. ‘Fucking hell,’ I said to him. ‘That’s Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.’

  ‘Matthew,’ I repeated, ‘that’s Tom Cruise who you just said to take his fucking feet off the table.’

  ‘Is it fuck!’ he said, looking back over his shoulder. ‘Bloody hell, it is.’ So Matthew went back over. ‘Mr Cruise, would you like a drink?’ Matthew is a cracking lad, but he’s got a mouth-and-half on him. The amount of scraps I’ve had to bail him out of . . . The little shit! Still, we were having a right laugh with them both as the night went on. Katie was asking us to repeat things in our broad Mancunian accents. I’d said to Matthew, ‘Someone’s done my napper in again,’ and she’d ask, ‘Napper, what’s that? Say that again.’

  After the concert we went to the Pure Nightclub in Caesars Palace, and they had reserved us a cabana that looked over the dance floor, which was packed with Brits. The dance floor was on a raised level and behind glass, and the fans saw me and started singing, ‘There’s only one Ricky Hatton’. The glass was nearly cracking as the number of people coming over increased, and the DJ stopped the music, shouting: ‘Step back from the glass. Step back.’ Then Mel B, fresh from the Spice Girls gig, came out and started shouting for everyone to step back, too, and all the fans were chanting, ‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ I was cringing inside but it was hilarious.

  I stayed in Vegas until the Tuesday after the fight, and it was surreal because nothing had really sunk in. No sooner had the fight finished I was up and about in Vegas. I was gutted, of course I was. But it was only when I got back to England and I didn’t have that beer in my hand – when I sat down, sobered up and got back to reality – that things began to change. You weigh it all up and then Paul Speak would say, ‘Ricky, don’t forget you’ve got that sportsman’s dinner on Thursday.’ ‘I’m not going,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go. I feel a dickhead. I don’t want to go.’

  I had to face up to losing for the first time as a professional. You’d think that as the days went by it would get easier. But while the cut healed and the bruises faded, the feeling within me stayed the same. In fact it didn’t – it got worse. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do, or where to go. I ended up drowning my sorrows in the bottom of a pint. After the first few I was up, happy and buoyant, but the more drunk I got, the deeper and deeper I went into myself; then I’d wake up hung-over and it was worse. Then I thought, ‘Right, I’ve had a jolly up. Sobered up. Now I’m going to chill out, relax for a few days and get some normality back.’ But the worst thing I could do when I was depressed was have a drink. I couldn’t use that as an excuse, though, because even when I didn’t have a drink I was still down and depressed. I didn’t want to do my appearances or go back to the gym; I was
absolutely gutted, it was devastating.

  So many fighters were just happy to fight Mayweather but I wasn’t happy just to fight him, I thought I was going to beat him. I was going to beat him. Probably the best compliment Floyd paid me after the fight was when he said, ‘You know what, Ricky? Sometimes when I get to rounds six, seven, eight, it’s almost like my opponents give in. It’s like the fight’s running away from them. But you, you flew off the stool in the tenth round.’ I haven’t seen him since. I didn’t really like him, really haven’t got much time for him and I haven’t got much to say to him. We didn’t have any common ground. But as a fan I can sit back and admire his talent, and I feel proud I’ve shared the ring with him now, on reflection. We were just total opposites.

  I think the only person who would beat Floyd is someone who tries to fight him at his own game. When he fights people like me, Miguel Cotto and Gatti, fighters who come to him, we bring the best out of him. He doesn’t like chasing the fight, he likes people coming at him. That’s what I did and it didn’t do me much good.

  Nowadays when I go to America, people look at me, astonished, and say, ‘You boxed Floyd Mayweather?’ When you see what a good champion he’s become maybe I see their point, but I didn’t for the life of me see it that way. I thought through gritted teeth beforehand, ‘I’m going to win. I’m going to kill you’ – I genuinely thought I was going to beat him. Now people say, ‘Well, you did almost go eleven rounds; he is the best.’ But that didn’t mean shit to me then. I thought I was going to win, I wasn’t just there for the payday. When I got beat, that’s when my depression started. When I didn’t beat Floyd and people were still trying to tell me I’d done well, it infuriated me: ‘Fucking did well? I should have beaten him.’

  I just wanted to apologize to everyone over and over again. Beforehand I was fired up, ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to beat him’ and then . . . Fucking hell. But it’s always meant a lot to me what the fans think and I felt I’d let them down.

  I have watched that fight back a hundred times and Joe Cortez still winds me up to the point that I want to jump through the TV screen and headbutt him. I can’t figure out why he was like he was that night.

  I would never say ‘If it wasn’t for the referee I would have beaten Floyd.’ Not at all. But I certainly feel Cortez didn’t help the matter. The top and bottom of it is I was fighting an all-time great; Mayweather was an outstanding fighter. Half the battle was getting to him because he was so good and slippery. The other half was trying to work once I did get in there because that night I felt Cortez wouldn’t allow it.

  Had I won, I think there would have been a big-money fight with Oscar De La Hoya, but the money from Mayweather ended up being astronomical. It was an extraordinary deal, and revolutionary in some respects, but at the same time it is something that I don’t think will happen again. I think everyone was taken aback by how well the fight did on SKY Box Office, and the deal I had with them saw me get a percentage of each pay-per-view sale. More than one million people stayed up to watch that fight in the United Kingdom. Floyd had thought that if he kept most of the US pay-per-view money and I kept the money from the British side that would be fair, but no one anticipated it being as big as it was. It was the best financial move of my career, agreeing to take all of the money from the British TV.

  No one saw it coming, despite mine and Floyd’s blend in personalities. None of us did. I didn’t know, Sky didn’t know, I think you can safely say that. No one knew. It took us all by surprise. Financially, life was never going to be the same after that. It also changed the landscape for English fighters on the world scene because their opponents all felt that the UK money should be divided once they could see the appetite for big-time boxing in Britain. It was one of the main issues that had to be ironed out before David Haye fought Wladimir Klitschko for the heavyweight titles years later, because Wladimir knew full well that the fight would do big business in England and he was on terrestrial TV in Germany, so any money he earned would have probably been a set fee, whereas David, on Box Office, would have potentially made far more. They could never have had a deal where David kept the UK TV money and Wladimir kept all of the money from Germany, because David would have taken home the lion’s share. In the end they reached an agreement, but it will almost always be a factor now when any British fighter gets a massive fight.

  More opportunities came for British boxers, too, as a consequence of the Mayweather bout, because every time a Brit fought in America, the US promoters thought the fight fans would go in their droves – though that has not necessarily remained the case.

  The Mayweather fight unquestionably paved the way for mine and my family’s financial future, but some people just don’t understand that I never turned up for the cash. Of course it helps, I’m not going to be a dickhead and say it doesn’t. It was not about the money, though. I never started boxing for the money. It was about the glory and fighting the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world. Floyd, who retired for two years after our fight but returned to dominate the sport, had won six world titles in five different weight classes. I wanted to fight him because he was the best and he certainly was, by a country mile.

  Now, after several years, there are pluses I can take from the fight.

  One, for me the referee had an off night. Two, I think Mayweather’s an all-time great. Three, I was a light-welterweight fighting at welterweight – it wasn’t like we were even weights, but when you get the opportunity to fight the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world, you’re not going to turn around and say, ‘No, I’m only a light-welter.’ I could have stayed in my division but I still dared to move up, even though it hadn’t worked out particularly well against Collazo. There was nothing wrong with my heart, it was all about the glory, for me. There were never any talks to get Floyd down to ten stone or fight at catchweight, he doesn’t need to – he’s Floyd Mayweather.

  It was a tough fight and fought at a frantic pace. It was nip and tuck for five rounds. Then, bit by bit, he pulled away. He was very good defensively, his speed was outstanding and although Floyd wasn’t a murderous puncher, he ended up knocking me out because he knew the right time and when to punch. It was about timing. He knew when to hold, when to break and knew when the storm had blown itself out.

  Well, the storm in the ring had blown itself out.

  I was left to contemplate the defeat. My sense of invincibility had now gone, having been an unstoppable force for so long, and I was forced to think about how I had let a nation down, as a fresh storm brewed.

  CHAPTER 9

  Rebuilding

  Defeat was hard for me to deal with but in the ring in Las Vegas that night, after I joked I’d slipped to Larry Merchant, I said I would fight on. That was never in any doubt. I was only twenty-eight, had just lost to the best fighter on the planet but I was still undefeated in my weight class.

  Training camp had been okay for Floyd but when I look back, in hindsight, I’d love to have had the Billy Graham of the Kostya Tszyu fight training me. He was having painkilling injections in his hands and elbows and it wasn’t the same; but it was business as usual when we started again after Mayweather.

  Ever since I was young I had wanted just three things, to be a world champion, support Man City and listen to Oasis. So here I was, not a world champion any longer but I had been, and I wanted to box at Manchester City. I ticked boxes as I went along: I’d boxed in Vegas, Madison Square Garden, in Manchester – and I still wanted to box at Man City.

  A few years ago, there had been talk of me and Junior Witter boxing at Maine Road, but now City were playing at the huge City of Manchester Stadium. I’d formed my own promotional group, Hatton Promotions, and we worked with Frank Maloney when I signed to fight Juan Lazcano, back at light-welterweight, at City’s ground. It was billed as my ‘Homecoming’ but I was coming off a defeat, and my return to box in Britain came after four fights in America. It had been three years since I’d fought Maussa in Sheffield.r />
  When we first booked the stadium, guys in the team said to me, ‘If you get 35,000 here it will be unbelievable.’ That sounded good to me. But then more than 40,000 tickets were sold in six hours, and by the time the fight came, it had been sold out weeks in advance. There were 58,000 fans there.

  Despite everything the Mayweather fight had been and its aftermath, it wasn’t hard to motivate myself once I eventually got back into the gym. In fact, the first time you come back from a defeat – and a knockout defeat at that – it is a very nervous time. And I did it in front of nearly 60,000 people. I don’t do things by halves, do I? The pressure was on.

  Some people might say I can’t have been that nervous because I wore a fat sumo-suit into the arena, but it’s always been about the show for me. It’s about making it an occasion for the fans. It was, of course, a nod to the critics who continued to bang on about me putting weight on between fights.

  On the undercard, IBF light-welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi defeated tough Lovemore Ndou in a drab encounter on points that was remembered more for Paulie having to have his dreadlocks cut in between rounds so he could see what he was doing. Even after that he wasn’t much better. To compound the misery, Matthew lost that night, too, to Craig Watson in a challenge for the Commonwealth title.

  I had been down in the dumps after the Mayweather fight, and I wanted to come back and look impressive. My feelings were that I wasn’t a welterweight, as shown to me by Collazo and now Mayweather, and I wanted to move back down to show I was still the best light-welterweight in the world. Lazcano was a good opponent, world-class in my eyes, but he was someone I was supposed to stop and look good against. That’s not how it panned out.