War and Peace

by Ricky Hatton

  After Dad attacked me in the car park, I never had one phone call from Matthew, saying, ‘Jesus, Ricky, what’s happened there?’ Nothing. It was in the papers, everyone knew. If he’d attacked Matthew I would have gone straight over there, Matthew was closer to me than anyone.

  It was a horrible position for him to be in, I know that, and I would never ask him to choose between me and my dad and my mum, but I feel I’ve not needed to, as his actions have been clear. A few people have stayed in the middle of the split but I don’t feel Matthew has. He never phoned me, he never went out of his way to speak to me . . . He still sees them, goes on family holidays as if nothing’s happened. I just feel like saying, ‘Bloody hell, Matthew. What planet are you on?’

  It is not the only thing I feel let down by Matthew about. When I was promoting Matthew we got a fight sorted for him for the WBA interim title against Ismael El Massoudi, and Eddie Hearn put in an objection at the last minute because his fighter, Kell Brook, was ranked above him. I had booked Bowlers, the Manchester venue, I’d got the tickets and posters printed and it was taking time to get it sanctioned, but I’d had it on good authority from the WBA it would go ahead because there was not much time and Brook wouldn’t have been able to get ready in three weeks.

  ‘Just hang fire,’ I said to Matthew – but out of the blue he pulled out. He said he’d been training for eight weeks and if the fight was not even sanctioned it might not happen. ‘Matthew,’ I said, ‘you’ve got an interim world title fight. It’s there for you. You’ve been training eight weeks. You only have to wait a few more days.’ He still withdrew. There are two sides to every story and I knew he could not see it all coming together in time but he should have had more faith.

  I was paying El Massoudi about €200,000 to come over to defend his belt, for my brother. I had already done that for him to get the European title shot against Gianluca Branco, the veteran Italian. I got him opportunities by investing my money and for him to turn around and go ‘I’m pulling out’, I couldn’t believe it. Matthew would have made less than the champion but sometimes that is how it works, you take less to get the opportunity – that’s how it was with me and Kostya Tszyu. He would have made decent money, I would have put an under-card together and, all in all, the show would have set me back about £250,000, and for my brother to pull out I felt let down.

  An article appeared in the Manchester Evening News with Matthew slagging my company off, saying the fight hadn’t been sanctioned. I felt it was a disgrace and that, although I’d done nothing wrong, I needed to look at my company. To put that in the paper, I was really disappointed. He slagged the business off when the firm had done a lot for his career and his finances. This was the company that had put food on the table for his family for years and just three or four weeks earlier I’d given him the apartment in Tenerife. Then he went to another promoter. I don’t mind that he left me because he went to fight Kell Brook, and Matthew has always fought the best opponents possible and Kell was the best in the country.

  Me and Matthew don’t speak any more which is, without doubt, very upsetting. I am sure he has his side of the story, but I don’t know what it is because we have never spoken about it.

  The family is split now and I don’t see him. It’s a shame but if you ask me if I’m disappointed in him then I would have to say ‘Yes.’ Everyone is in an awkward situation, really. I don’t see my Uncle Paul, I rarely see my Uncle Ged, Auntie Margaret, never mind my mum and dad or Matthew. I feel for the others because they’re in a horrible position and they don’t know what to do. If they come round to see me I don’t want them being moaned at for seeing me.

  Matthew has done really well in his career when you think he turned pro just to give it a go after about fifteen amateur fights. I’d thought that because he’d spent less time in the amateurs he would be a late bloomer and he’d come into his peak later than most. I said, ‘Keep at it, keep at it and you’ll come good.’ He kept at it and went on to win a European title and fight Saúl Álvarez for a world title. It just shows any aspiring pros or kids from the local boxing clubs that it can be done because he’s done so well.

  When I look back, I can’t remember the last time my dad told me he loved me. I have no doubt he was proud of me but things had changed. I don’t remember going round to my dad’s house and it being about anything but business. Even my mum used to turn round and say, ‘Ray, can we have a day off from boxing today?’ Sometimes I would phone him up and he would start listing everything he’d been doing in the business. I said, ‘Dad, but I’ve rung you.’

  He would pause. ‘Oh, all right, what’s up?’

  ‘I’m just phoning to see how you are, Dad.’

  When I think of being a father, as much as anything else it’s about telling your kids how much you love them – I tell Campbell, Millie and Fearne exactly that, every day. It’s emotional support. Emotional security. For the last fifteen years I don’t think I had a dad – I had a business manager. I really don’t mean that to sound horrible but, it is how our relationship became.

  I’ve kept out of his way, I don’t speak to him, I don’t talk to him, I’ve moved my apartment, my season ticket at City, he sent a solicitor’s letter, I sent one – since then I’ve tried to do everything right to keep myself to myself. I can’t do any more than I have done but it’s the split with my family that’s eaten away at me the most.

  It’s split the whole family. We’d all been so close. They’d all been to Vegas for the fights, we’d all been on the cruises. We’d had so many happy times together. All of us. I just don’t see the others now.

  I dwell on things. That’s what depression does to you. You dwell on them, and I harp on about things and take things personally.

  People think it was the Pacquiao fight that sent me over the edge; they think it was the News of the World; they think it was the drink, the drugs. Perhaps it was all of those in part, but this, this was the fucking biggest killer for me.

  CHAPTER 13

  Redemption

  ‘You’re a freak of nature,’ Billy Graham and Kerry Kayes used to tell me. ‘You can’t lose three stone, win a world title, come back, lose three stone again and beat Kostya Tszyu, lose three stone again, move up in weight, move down in weight and keep losing several stones for each fight – because sooner or later you’re going to hit that wall. You’re getting away with it, but it’s not going to be like that forever.’

  That is what happened on the night of the comeback, wasn’t it? My body wasn’t the same as it was years ago.

  ‘Ricky, you’re going to have to start looking after yourself a bit better,’ they’d say. That was years ago, and if you think of everything I had been through, it was a warning I had never heeded – I’d always been able to get away with it. As the weight dropped off for my comeback there was no reason to suggest things would be any different when I got back into the Manchester Arena ring for the first time since I had defeated Tszyu seven years earlier.

  My opponent was Ukrainian Vyacheslav Senchenko. He had lost his WBA welterweight world title in his previous contest, to my old friend Paulie Malignaggi, but it was the only fight he had lost in twenty-six bouts. He was good, and the minute I proved I still had plenty left, I wanted to be fighting for world titles. That wouldn’t be possible if I was fighting Mr Bean – you have to fight someone who will get you rated.

  I enjoyed training with Bob and my guys in the gym. It was brilliant. I loved it again. It was clicking and I don’t think I’d ever looked in better shape. The change was monumental, internally and externally. Physically, after three and a half years out, and having this time lost four-and-a-half stone, I can imagine people thinking, ‘How does this dickhead do it?’

  But you couldn’t see the damage that I’d done over the years. Sooner or later it was going to catch up on me, like Billy and Kerry said it would. People like them, as well as journalists, had always raised concerns about it, but when I kept winning and winning, they couldn’t really keep
saying and writing he’s fat and pissed in the pub again. They’d already done that story dozens of times, there was no point doing it any more.

  This fight was something different though. It was not just another fight for me. This was about redemption, a chance to change what I believed public perceptions were of me.

  I’d always loved Roberto Durán, and I respect him more than you can imagine, but, for a while, before he ended up having major surgery to help his weight, he was huge. People were amazed that he was in such bad shape, but no matter what Roberto does he will always be my hero. I was looking at him once and he had this dirty horrible T-shirt, jacket and jeans on and it looked like he’d not had a wash in about a fortnight – he could have walked in with a bin bag on and I would have admired him – and I thought, ‘Look at the size of him.’ I bet people had looked at me in the same way.

  I didn’t want that any more. If I’d retired and sat on a beach somewhere and just carried on getting fatter and being a drunken fucking idiot like I was, people wouldn’t have had any respect for me. But with people being able to see I was coming back, at thirty-four, after the Manny Pacquiao defeat, after all the troubles I’d had, I thought they might say, ‘Good for him.’

  The big question was, of course, was I coming back? It was a big decision, huge. People had always told me I’d had a great career, but I’d got to the point where that didn’t mean anything to me. They asked why I couldn’t leave it, but there was more to it than that. No one wants to end their career the way I did – destroyed after my worst night. I didn’t want to retire; it’s just the hunger wasn’t there. All things considered, when you pile that on top of it, it had been a horrible three years. But being a father again, working with my fighters in the gym and being able to pass on my knowledge changed my mindset – I was filled with a passion to make people proud of me, and I wanted Campbell and Millie to be proud of me and to make British boxing and my country proud again. I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me, saying: ‘What a career he had but didn’t he go and blow it.’ I wanted everyone to be proud of me once more.

  It was not just about a comeback. The last thing people saw of me in the boxing ring was me flat on my back against Pacquiao and that story in the paper. Fat, overweight, sweating, in bars and nightclubs and ultimately in a hotel room. ‘Can I believe I looked up to that man there?’ they must have said. I couldn’t blame people for thinking it, but I still wanted to be the People’s Champion and I did not think I was any longer. This was about redeeming myself and redemption was more valuable to me than any world title. People will forgive you and if they see you’re making an effort – they will believe you.

  I had started using Twitter when I was still in my depression and I tweeted a picture of me, Jen and Millie when we were out for Sunday lunch. ‘Why don’t you just get AIDS and die you fat bastard?’ someone replied.

  I would fire back – I didn’t really know how Twitter worked at the time. I didn’t realize there would be so many trolls and how personal the abuse could get and I wasn’t ready for it. I’d get up in the morning and look at what I wrote the night before and think, ‘I can’t believe I sent that.’ I didn’t like the person I was at the time – my responses weren’t newspaper-worthy but it was hardly PR-friendly. There were a lot of good wishes on Twitter but some of the hurtful things were really horrible. I suppose I got used to it and, as I got better, I could relax about it rather than get involved in arguments.

  When I first turned round and mentioned the comeback to Jennifer she was not for it at all. She’s not a boxing fan and she first wanted me to pack it in after Maussa, then again before Pacquiao. But she saw how I’d knuckled down, how I got myself in shape, and she saw me physically disappear from the fifteen stone I was to being healthy, sounding more positive and after I had started my training camp, sparring and doing the pads with Bob, she couldn’t shut me up. I was buzzing once more. She’d seen me at my worst and lowest. It’s nice that people out there cautioned me about getting hurt or tarnishing my legacy, but you need to have been in and around the four walls of our house over those last three years to understand why I was doing it. I had reasons that the public just didn’t know about.

  I had so much drive because I felt I’d pissed everything I’d done against the wall.

  I know there were plenty of negative whispers. I could hear them. Whether it was in the papers or on the Internet, the mood gradually started to change a bit. There were some who said, ‘Fair play to him for coming back and giving it another shot.’ I thought, ‘Hopefully I will come back with a vengeance, put in a good performance and prove all the naysayers wrong, as I always have done.’

  My career was about to start again; already there was exciting talk of me facing Britain’s top light-welterweights and welterweights, Amir Khan and Kell Brook. Khan would have probably been the easiest fight to make because he was with Golden Boy and with all the work we’d done with Golden Boy it would have made sense. Brook’s ability was not in doubt; good boxer, good puncher with good skills. But I thought there were question marks over attributes that you need if you’re going to get to the highest level. He had never been in the trenches, tested his heart or stamina late in a fight. He was slick, quick and talented – with a decent punch – but his talent had not yet turned into world titles. Then there was talk of a two-fight deal with Malignaggi, who held the WBA welterweight belt, having dethroned Senchenko. A former opponent with a title, we could have done a fight in England and one in the USA, and that seemed a likely option. I’d watched them all since I’d been off, from the comfort of my settee, and thought, ‘Come on, Rick. What are you doing sat here?’ But three years was a long time to be out and there was no point talking about them until I could show everyone what I had left.

  I knew there would be questions about the fight with my dad at the press conference. Stories appeared in the papers that morning but the detail was thin. It was tough convincing everyone that day that my mind was solely on the fight because it wasn’t. It was emotional to say the least, and I nearly didn’t make it – when I went to leave the house I said to Paul Speak, ‘I’m not sure I can keep it together, here.’

  At the Radisson I started talking about how I’d let my family down, how I had let my community down and how I let British boxing down. I felt my bottom lip going and I was getting emotional but thankfully I made it through. All I wanted was for people to give me a chance when I finally stepped back into the ring, on 24 November 2012. That’s all I asked – the chance to prove there was life in the old dog.

  When you think I was suicidal and sometimes waking up in the morning with a knife, where I’d been trying to summon up the courage to ‘do it’ and never did, thank God. When I looked at those days and reflected on the size of me, I was actually bursting with pride to be back up there in front of the media, and I meant every word when I said I wanted people to be proud of me. I wanted my redemption.

  By the end of it, I think people who were maybe unsure of the comeback knew why I was doing it. I felt that even if the worst was to happen and I was to be defeated, then it wouldn’t have been like the Pacquiao loss, on my back after two rounds. If I was beaten then my training camp would still have been better than it was for Pacquiao. There were simply too many question marks after that last defeat for me to be sat on the settee, content with just retiring. People couldn’t appreciate what demons and ghosts I had going around in my head; they needed to be put to bed if I was ever going to live without boxing.

  The next time I retired I would make sure it was for the right reasons and knowing I could do no more.

  Despite a double-dip recession and money being tight everywhere, more than 18,000 tickets sold in two days after they went on sale. That was before we announced an opponent or the undercard. It was a full house after a week or so. I couldn’t have been more proud – after everything – that people were still interested in me fighting. You can put good shows on and good fights and, as a promoter, I know how hard it is
to sell them. It made me teary-eyed but it didn’t detract from the main goal – that I wanted to bounce back with a vengeance because I felt I had ruined my career and ruined my life.

  It wasn’t simply about winning the world title, it was bigger than that for me. I didn’t come back to fight six-rounders – I came back to fight the best. The fight was signed at welterweight, never my best weight, but I was older now. I wasn’t sure my body had another ten stone weigh-in in it. I doubt it does.

  I was training with Bob because I didn’t want to be far from Jen and Millie and I could still train my own fighters, too. I was running with my guys in the early morning, training them before lunch in my gym and going to Bob’s to train in the afternoon. Bob used a fair few of Billy’s old methods. He used the bodybelt and we were doing weights, circuits and some gruelling runs. I had seen the work he had done with Matthew and his own fighters, Denton Vassell and Prince Arron, and I always knew he was a caring trainer. Bob said to several journalists that he was looking after a British institution; if nothing else, that was a reminder of my age.

  In the gym I was not missing a trick, it was like I had not been away. The weight fell off, sparring was sharp and my timing was on from the start. ‘You look like a young man again,’ Bob would say.

  I found myself able to almost eat what I wanted, but I didn’t want rubbish any more. It was a lifestyle choice I was making. Why would I eat junk, because what goes into your mouth is your fuel and where you get your energy from. With about a fortnight to go I was only around a stone over the weight. In the old days I was a stone over on fight week.

  The media interest was intense, the training hard and the Manchester Arena was jam-packed. With all of the hype about me possibly fighting for world titles again, I read somewhere that if my comeback was successful, and I wound up back topping the bill in Las Vegas, it would be the best comeback since Elvis. The fight was on Primetime in the UK and on Showtime in America. The atmosphere was unlike anything I’d experienced – whether it was the Tszyu fight, the thousands of supporters in Las Vegas or 58,000 at the City fight. This was different.