War and PeaceMy Story

by Ricky Hatton

  Having everything means nothing when depression takes a hold of you. You don’t think, ‘Look what I’ve got.’ It’s all ‘I’ll never do this, I don’t want that.’ It’s all negative and it takes everything within you to shake it off.

  It’s been the toughest fight of my life.

  Or at least it was. When I eventually got into court with Billy, in December 2010, things got far worse.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Lowest Ebb

  That December I found myself somewhere I never wanted to be: in court with Billy. I was shocked to see him. He had a big, long beard, looked terrible and was overweight and I wasn’t far behind him in that respect.

  I said stuff in the courtroom to Billy that I would never have said if I had known what I know now. He and I had a lot of good times. I could see us one day sitting down and talking about the old days but, knowing him like I do, it wouldn’t surprise me if he said, ‘Listen, you said too much in that courtroom for me to go back now.’

  The fall out with Billy is a part of my career that was a real downer because I loved him and I hope he reads this. He was more than a trainer and to end the incredible road we travelled on together on such bad terms like that is massively upsetting. For a while I thought Billy was ungrateful and there was bad blood between us, but now I see things a bit differently. Time can allow a different perspective sometimes. I don’t think we will ever be mates again, but I’ll always be grateful for what he did for me. I wish him and his family nothing but the best.

  Eventually, Billy and I settled out of court and that day I walked straight from there to the pub. I felt ill. At that time I was in the middle of a major falling out with my dad over money. It’s the thing no one wants to fall out about. I am not going to go into details because the two people who matter – me and him – know exactly what happened and why it is an issue. We had a confrontation and whatever the rights and wrongs, I said I needed him to do certain things that I thought were fair or lose me. Whatever his reasons he chose his path and he has to live by his choices, as do I and my family.

  If that wasn’t enough, things became more complicated and strained over the months that followed. In September 2011, Jennifer and I had a baby girl, Millie-Meg Hatton. When Millie was born I wasn’t speaking to my mum and dad because of the money issues but Jennifer phoned my mum and said we’d had a girl and invited her to the hospital. She came, I’m there, and my mum and dad came in and they were fussing over Millie. They did not say two words to me. No ‘Congratulations, Son. We’ve had our problems but isn’t she beautiful?’ Nothing. To be fair, I did not say anything to them.

  My mum had always wanted a girl. ‘I’m sick of boxing gloves and football boots,’ she’d say, ‘I want a little girl.’

  I said to Jennifer that Millie still deserved to see her grandparents, who were a ten-minute walk from our house: ‘I don’t have to get on with my mum and dad but they can see her whenever they want – you can take her up the hill to see them.’

  Every week, Jennifer, who’d had a C-section, pushed Millie up the hill so they could see her. A couple of weeks before Millie’s first Christmas, my mum gave Jennifer Millie’s Christmas present. Two weeks before Christmas. I thought that was strange. You’d give the grandkids their presents on Christmas Day, wouldn’t you? ‘Aren’t they going to want to see her on Christmas Day?’ I asked Jennifer. ‘Well, you don’t know. They might be getting all their jobs out of the way,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re going to bother,’ I replied. She said I was jumping the gun because I wasn’t getting on with them.

  Christmas Day came and there was nothing. No phone call. Nothing. Campbell came round late in the afternoon and he’d been over to my mum and dad’s for a Christmas party. I said to Jennifer, ‘So the rest of the family are up there having a party with Campbell and they, on Millie’s first Christmas Day, have not wanted to see her or phoned to wish her a Happy Christmas?’ The whole family had been up there.

  A couple of days later Jennifer called my mum and put the phone on loudspeaker in the kitchen, asking my mum why she’d not been in touch. She said her phone had been on charge all Christmas day, but Jen wouldn’t have that as an excuse for not seeing Millie. Then Mum said it was about me and my dad not speaking and that it was my fault. Jennifer wasn’t having that, either: ‘Don’t blame it on your relationship with Ricky. It’s not a Ricky–Carol–Ray situation. This is a Millie–Carol–Ray situation,’ Jennifer said.

  She told my mum that two weeks after her C-section she had been pushing Millie up the hill to see her, despite the advice of her family and the doctors, but she’d still done it. My mum replied, ‘It’s not like it’s the end of the world, is it, Jennifer?’ We couldn’t believe our ears. The conversation took a turn for the worse and I told Jen to put the phone down.

  The next day, Jen got a text off my mum: ‘What’s happening with Millie?’ That was what we’d been asking the day before but they’d had their family gathering and only now could they squeeze Millie in? I told Jen not to reply and the next day we got a text that said, ‘This problem will not go away.’

  It was a horrible period. It added to my depression and I hit an all-time low.

  It felt like it was me and Jen against the world. I was more isolated than ever and I took no pride in what was going on with my family. I didn’t talk about it to anyone.

  We had always been one and the same, a family unit. There had been the TV show, portraying us all as one small happy family and Matthew, my mum and my dad were a big part of everything I’d done. Family had always meant the world to me. Then, when the difficulties with my dad came along it seemed almost everyone took his side.

  Out of all of us I had the first apartment on the complex in Tenerife years ago and, as I started doing better, I bought a bigger apartment and gave the other one to my mum and dad. When things got even better, I got an even bigger apartment on the top floor and gave the other one to Matthew – it’s not like I was tight. Some people might get taken out for meals, I buy apartments in Tenerife.

  After the falling out, when me and Jennifer were in Tenerife sunbathing on the roof we could look over the balcony and could see both my mum and dad’s place and Matthew’s. We didn’t feel comfortable there, even if they weren’t around; I hated it, I didn’t like it on the balcony, I didn’t like walking down the street in case I bumped into them – so I moved my apartment. I bought them the apartments and I was the one who ended up moving.

  It was the same at Manchester City. A group of us, me and a few friends and relatives, had chipped in for a box. We had it for a few seasons and then we all got season tickets together. Before the fall out, my dad got a season ticket as well. I renewed my season ticket the following season, not thinking he would do the same, but he did. I was going to the football and watching City and he was sat a couple of seats down from me.

  The only positive in all of this was it had somehow helped give me a fresh focus – a new perspective on things. I was in the gym with my fighters, Craig Lyon, Adam Little, Ryan Burnett and Sergey Rabchenko, and the weight was coming off me. From nearly fifteen stone, the pounds dropped off. I started running, more weight came off and I could see some cheekbones reappearing.

  Friends started asking me if I was going to make a comeback, and in my mind I believed I might be able to, but it was not the first thing I was thinking of. As I posted training pictures on Twitter, more and more people asked if I was coming back. It became more of a possibility, as I got into better shape with each day and every training session – I was both looking better and feeling better. I was not drinking, was watching what I ate, while training hard and regularly was having a therapeutic effect.

  About five months had passed since my mum had texted Jen. There was not a phone call, no one knocking on the door asking to see Millie, nothing. I was finding everything so difficult to understand – how could this have happened?

  I was never won over by the Priory (I know they do good work
but it just did not work for me) and Jen suggested I should look to go somewhere else. She found out about a place called Sporting Chance, a private and specialized facility for elite sportsmen and women who have demons to face. It’s in Hampshire and was the brainchild of former Arsenal footballer Tony Adams, who’d publicly confronted alcoholism. It takes just four people at a time, and it is fair to say I didn’t want to go.

  I hadn’t been able to shake the depression and different things would set me off, like my dad driving past me in the car, or something else. It could only be something minor but I would struggle to cope. Even when I’ve been in good places I’ve still had bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts, and when something has upset me, I’ve just thought, ‘Life doesn’t matter any more,’ and loosely that meant going to the pub and getting absolutely shit-faced.

  Jennifer was saying, ‘Why don’t you go and speak to someone?’ and I would fire back, ‘I don’t fucking need to speak to someone. What would I do that for? I haven’t got a drink problem. I haven’t got a drug problem.’ She said, ‘But, Rick, every time something upsets you, you turn to drink and you go on that warpath of wanting to drink yourself to death. It’s all connected and they will probably talk to you about how best to deal with it.’

  We reached a decision that I would go to see someone who knows about sport and who knows how to deal with sports people. At Sporting Chance they taught me how to cope better when things flared up; they’d had people there with drink problems, drug problems and gambling problems, and they were used to dealing solely with sportsmen at the top of their game.

  At the Priory I’d felt I was in with a lot of people who had to go in there because they had a drink or drug problem; none of them had the problems I was dealing with. They had their own specific subjects. Sporting Chance is used to dealing with sports people and they treated me differently perhaps because they knew where I was coming from a little bit more.

  Just because you’ve become successful at your particular sport doesn’t mean life is always a bed of roses. It really isn’t. When all of a sudden it’s gone, it’s not easy, and it was nice to go in there and speak to people, sportspeople, who have the same problems. I was in a good place straight away.

  Let’s be clear, I don’t think you ever get rid of depression. The best way I can describe it is it’s a bit like a wave machine at an aqua park. One minute the waters are all calm, then something can trigger you off and it can be the smallest of things but a ripple can turn into a tidal wave, which in my case leads to me at times going on a bender and wanting to drink myself into oblivion. By the time I went to Sporting Chance I had practically made my mind up about making a comeback, but I wanted some clarity before a final decision. They helped me learn how to cope better when problems arose, but another appeared while I was in there.

  Having not heard from my family for five months, I got a solicitor’s letter saying that, as grandparents, my mum and dad would like to see their granddaughter; that they didn’t want to go down the court route but that they might do that. As far as I was concerned they hadn’t bothered on Christmas Day, then not for five months, and then they sent me a solicitor’s letter about my daughter while I was trying to clear my head – steam was coming out of my ears. If I’d have been back in Gee Cross I don’t know what I would have done.

  I felt that even when I go away to a place to try and sort my problems out and get better, they still can’t let it lie. Of course they did not know what was going on with me, but then I guess I felt that was rather the point. Whenever I think I’m getting somewhere, something else raises its head. I was so down again, tears were flowing like a waterfall and thank God I was in Sporting Chance with the right people around me. Sporting Chance did a massive amount for me, teaching me how to deal with so much, and I will always be eternally grateful to them. I’m in a better place now because of my time there and I came out of there feeling fresh, despite what had happened.

  Around a month passed and I replied to my parents, through solicitors, and said we did not want them to have contact with Millie. We had never stopped them seeing her, as far as I was concerned they had just not been arsed. I know that sounds harsh and I am sure they see it differently, but it is how I feel. Despite the issues between us, Jennifer had made the attempt to keep them involved. It was all such a mess. The letters went back and forth and I put a few home truths in them. It was bitter and horrible, as things often are when you get solicitors involved. I did not want any of it, but did feel the need to defend myself.

  For the next month or so I buried my head in my training and, as speculation intensified, I made up my mind about my future and called a press conference to make an announcement. I was going to come back. We booked a conference suite at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Manchester and on Friday 14 September 2012, I was faced with convincing the world that not only was my return to the ring, at the age of thirty-three, a good idea and that my mind was fully on the job at hand, but I had to hide the fact that I was in turmoil over everything that was happening with my family.

  As I prepared for my own fight, with Bob Shannon at his gym in Openshaw, I was still training my boxers every day at my gym. The buzz was back.

  The press conference is tomorrow, the worst days are behind me and I’m excited as I go to the gym, tapping the steering wheel to the radio, pulling up in my usual parking space alongside Hatton Health and Fitness. It’s mild outside, fine for the tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt that I’m wearing as I prepare to train my fighters. I turn the ignition button off and walk round the car to take my kitbag from the boot.

  As I open it up I hear the angry revved engine of a four-wheel-drive vehicle hurtling into the car park. It brakes sharply and comes to a stop behind my car, trapping me in. It’s Dad.

  I wonder if he has been waiting for me to come here, but before I know it he’s storming round the front of his car and shouting at me. ‘All that stuff you’ve written about your mum in that solicitor’s letter is a fucking disgrace!’ he yells.

  I’m unprepared, but manage to fire back, ‘You tell me what part of it is a lie, then?’ I carry on taking my gym bag out of the boot and hold it by the handles in my right hand. Dad is still fuming and we exchange a few words. He is angry – furious – but I stand my ground.

  Then he swings at me. He punches me in the face, catching me on the cheek.

  ‘Dad, do not do that again,’ I ask, although I can see he is still fired up. ‘Don’t fucking do that again.’ He’s enraged so I hold him up against my car, hoping the storm blows itself out, but when I let him go he comes at me and cracks me in the face again. ‘Dad, this is your last warning.’ I can see he will not listen and that nothing I can say will stop him; he swings a leg at me, trying to kick me.

  That’s it. It has to stop.

  I block it and crack him with my left hand, causing him to fall against his car. Seconds pass but groggily he comes defiantly back at me. ‘Do it again. Do it again!’ he shouts. I still have my kit bag in my right hand. I think to myself quickly, ‘I know what he’s up to. He wants me to fill him in, here.’

  ‘Go away,’ I reply, forcefully.

  Finally, he scurries back around the car and speeds off. The whole thing lasts barely a minute. I’m shaken up. I’m in bits, actually, and I walk into the gym shaking my head, trying to fathom what has just happened. I think to myself how I’d just had to crack my dad because he’d attacked me – there is no pride attached to doing it.

  I walk into the gym, shell-shocked, still shaking, and one of the employees looks at me, stunned. We phone Paul Speak and tell him about it. A former policeman, he will know what to do. We review our CCTV footage and watch the whole sorry sight unfolding again. Then the phone rings and things start going from really bad to far worse.

  Paul had a voicemail from my mum saying that I’d chinned Ray and that they had witnesses. We’d seen it on CCTV and we were thinking, ‘What witnesses has she got?’ We were the only ones there and we had it on tape. I had
the best witness: the camera footage.

  I was in a dilemma what to do. If I sat there and waited for the police to come and take me to the station, or waited for them to come and speak to me in front of the world’s media at the press conference the next day I would have no control over when they would speak to me or how they would interpret it. Rather than the headlines reading ‘Ricky Hatton’s making a comeback’ they would be ‘Ricky Hatton chins his dad’.

  We phoned the police, they came round to the gym and I showed them the footage. ‘I don’t want him arrested or anything like that,’ I said, ‘just tell him to stay away from me.’ But after they saw the attack they said it was a clear-cut case of assault and they had to proceed. So they went to his house, arrested him, took him to the police station and showed him the footage, where he admitted he had attacked me first and then they gave him a caution.

  Of course, I could have pressed charges but I didn’t want to. He put some cock-and-bull story in the papers about not wanting me to make a comeback. I was looking fit and well and, instead of being happy for me, he chose to do this the day before one of the biggest days of my life.

  The ironic thing about this was the solicitor’s letter I had sent to them had gone three weeks earlier. So you would have read the letter, reacted and gone straight round there, not left it until the day before the press conference. But that’s why you have solicitors’ letters, to stop stuff like that from happening.

  The press conference went ahead as planned, and I managed to convince almost everyone that it was the right thing for me to be doing – and it was. The incident was low key, although of course everyone wanted more information.

  There were brief reports in the papers about the confrontation with my dad, just stating that a sixty-one-year-old male had attacked a thirty-three-year-old in Hyde and was cautioned.

  The rot had set in with Matthew a while back, too. He had sat on the fence and didn’t get involved with the family dispute and that frustrated me.