by Ricky Hatton
With Nigel Benn what you saw is what you got. When he was beaten by Michael Watson he tried to change his style a little and box more but Nigel was always straightforward, no frills, no holds barred and always on the attack. But the more I learned about boxing and its characters, the more I started to enjoy the subtleties of the game, and Roberto Durán, the legend from Panama, became my favourite. While he was exciting, he also had a fantastic defence and not a lot of people gave him credit for that. He was rarely nailed cleanly by a punch, he’d either pull away, try to take the sting out of the shot, get a shoulder on it or just get out of the way. He was very, very good defensively and he would fight anyone and everyone. He was also up in weight, down in weight, and when you think he first won the title at lightweight and boxed the likes of Ken Buchanan and people like that, it’s incredible to think he moved up and was one of the fabulous four – Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns and Durán – at middleweight. He’d won world titles first at lightweight against the likes of Esteban de Jesús and Buchanan when he was nine stone nine pounds years earlier. Then he was fighting Marvin Hagler, one of the greatest middleweights of all time, up at eleven stone six, and he could still mix it up with him.
There was no YouTube then so I collected old VHS cassettes. When I was in the pub, the old farts would come in and say, ‘Oh, this is who you wanna watch. Watch Jake LaMotta, watch Joe Louis, watch this guy or that guy.’ It was nice, really, because everyone there knew I was a boxer and they all took an interest in me. ‘Watch Larry Holmes’s jab, watch Tommy Hearns’s right hand,’ they would say. So I would do more and more reading about the fighters and it was Durán I really warmed to. I got more and more into it. I’d put the tapes on and be amazed and think, ‘Jeez, I want to find out more about this guy.’
Apparently, outside the ring, Durán ended up skint because he’d do things like see a tramp and give him the last money that was in his pocket. He gave everything away. I admired him; there were no airs or graces about Durán, he was a man of the people, as mad as a hatter, fought the best and went through the weights. What’s not to like? He was a real fan favourite. Of course, as a teenager I was no Durán but I was doing okay.
I still got some excitement from going to see Manchester City play, of course, but it wasn’t the same as with the boxing. I particularly loved the wizardry of Georgi Kinkladze, the Georgian midfielder who had so much flair and somehow managed to exhibit it in a team that did not have much success. Despite City struggling at the time, whenever he started running at the defenders, you just moved a couple of inches forwards in your seat because he was so good. When he got the ball you knew that something could happen. I thought, how great it would be to be a sportsman that excites people.
In June 1995, at the age of sixteen, I was rated as the tenth best amateur welterweight in the country, with my future pro rival Junior Witter at number three because he was a bit older than me, but by the end of the year I was representing England and, of all places, it was in Blackpool, where I’d been on so many family holidays. I’d trained at Crystal Palace with the full England team, sparring with Alan Vaughan, a very good fighter from Liverpool who won the World Juniors, and with Tommy Peacock, who I would go on to fight for my first pro title.
When I boxed for England Schoolboys the first time I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’m coming out to the national anthem here, boxing for my country.’ The penny actually dropped that I was quite decent. I made a pig’s ear of it on the night, though.
It was a head shot. Typical me, I was excited. I had sold a lot of tickets, about three coachloads went down – including the regulars from the New Inn – and it was at the Winter Gardens. Germany’s Jürgen Brähmer was a very tall southpaw, had a typical amateur style, stood upright, always led with the southpaw right and fired in hard left crosses. I flew at him, tried to jump down his throat, hoping to impress; I was giving him a bit of a seeing to, having no problems landing or catching his shots. But he was a good, quality fighter and he was waiting for that one time. That left came straight down the middle, my legs went wobbly and I went down. I got back up and he gave me a standing count and then he caught me with another three or four shots before the England coach in my corner, Ian Irwin, threw the towel in.
I went away, learned and practised. Fortunately, it was not long before I had the chance to right the wrong against Brähmer as we met in Sardinia in a multi-nations tournament a few months later – in June of 1996. He beat me on points this time but by comparison with our first fight it was nip and tuck. His height, allied with the computer scoring – which had only just come out at that stage – didn’t help short, stocky fighters like me. He was better suited to it. This time I’d changed my tactics from Blackpool, used my head a bit more, and managed to push him fairly close.
Having won so many national titles boxing as a schoolboy, and for Young England, I just never thought anyone could beat me. Now this fella Brähmer had beaten me twice and, even though it was closer the second time, there was no doubt about the decision. I came back from Sardinia thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I wouldn’t fancy him again. He’s the dog’s bollocks.’ I had been boxing at welterweight, and I felt so strong when I was knocking everybody out that I had never felt the need to boil myself down to light-welterweight. Then Mr Brähmer knocked me out, beat me again and I thought, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It hadn’t been so noticeable at domestic level but on the world scene, those fights taught me that I couldn’t afford to give a couple of kilos away against that kind of quality opposition. It cemented my decision to move down in weight, and when I went to Cuba to fight in the World Juniors in November 1996 I did so at light-welterweight.
Cuba fascinated me and I loved it there – the old American cars, the ramshackle gyms and that everyone had the same passion as I did: boxing. I knew about Cuba’s history. We went in a few of the boxing gyms and their amateurs are so highly regarded and successful it was incredible to see first-hand how they did it with such little funding – there were tyres and mattresses fitted to the walls and they used them as punchbags. They did loads and loads of shadow-boxing, partly because they hardly had any equipment, but that’s why their footwork was always very good. The Cubans were always good on their feet.
I thrived there. In the championships, in Havana, I was the only one to beat a Cuban and the papers there gave me some headlines. ‘The English Mike Tyson,’ they called me, because I jumped all over Roberto Guerra Rivera. I won on points and it went down like a lead balloon on the night. As I left the ring they were pointing angrily at me, doing slit-throat gestures. It was a cracking fight though, and they warmed to me as the tournament progressed. I’d already beaten the fighter from Georgia, then beat the American Keith Kemp, but in the semi-final I was defeated by Timur Mergadze, the Russian who went on to win it. The fight with the Cuban, who I’d beaten, was a lot tougher than the one against the Russian, who I thought I’d handled easily enough. Four of the five judges had me ahead on total punches landed but I somehow lost 14–10. One of the journalists who covered it wrote: ‘The truth of the matter is that but for the peculiar button-pressing antics of one of the five judges, the Sale West boxer would have been a clear winner.’
I was absolutely devastated because, having beaten the Cuban, then the American, I then thought if I’d beaten the Russian, and I felt I had, I was almost there. I thought I’d won the fight, Ian Irwin thought I’d won it. There was a kid from Venezuela, Richard Reina, in the other semi-final and he beat Christian Meyer, a German switch-hitter who he’d stood on his head, yet Meyer got the decision. Subsequently, me and the Venezuelan got the bronze medals and the Russian got the gold with the German getting the silver. They actually got booed on the podium, while me and the Venezuelan were cheered and applauded – even though the Cubans had been smarting when I’d beaten their fighter, the fans went on and supported me. I felt for the lads who were booed because it wasn’t their fault.
It was no surprise that Jürgen Brähmer won the gold at welte
rweight. I thought he was a special fighter and he went on to become the WBO light-heavyweight champion as a professional.
When I got back I disconsolately chucked the bronze medal in a drawer, shut it away and forgot all about it, I was that upset. It was only several years later, when I moved out of Mum and Dad’s house, that I found it.
A few days later I went to Motherwell and boxed in an England–Scotland match, knocking out Kevin McIntyre – a future professional British champion – in one round and Paul and I decided I would enter the senior ABAs for the first time. I was eighteen. I fought Jamie Spence and a kid from Droylsden, Paul Sweeting, in our local area and I knocked both of them out. Then I ended up boxing a guy called Carl Wall from Liverpool in the North West finals; he had already won the ABAs a year or so earlier at light-welterweight, and we fought a really close fight at Everton Park. I’d heard that he was a bit chinny and it was probably the worst bit of information I could have had because I went out there like a headless chicken, wild and reckless, and when I went back to the corner at the end I thought I wasn’t going to get the decision. It was on a knife-edge, and I scraped home 14–6 – he wasn’t chinny at all.
In the quarter-finals I thought I’d be fighting London puncher David Walker, but he was defeated by a guy called John Gallagher, brother of fan-favourite British super-featherweight champion P.J. Gallagher. He was a bit of a scrapper and we had a good fight at the York Hall, Bethnal Green in London’s East End, and then I boxed Wolverhampton’s Gary Reid, stopping him in the third round of five two-minute sessions as it was back then. He went on to be a good pro.
I fractured my right wrist against Reid. I went to the doctor, had it X-rayed and we were in two minds about pulling out. It was just about bearable, although if I punched with any venom I would have really felt it. I believed that if I just played a bit with the right – used it sparingly as a feeling punch for my combinations – and just loaded up on my left I might be all right. I didn’t want to hand the ABA title to anyone on a plate or give them a bye in the final. Me and the other finalist, Michael Hall, an England international, were the number one and number two in the country, and it was down to us. I was practically one-handed and went left-hand crazy, double left hook, left hook to the body, left hook upstairs, left uppercut. By the end, I thought I’d won the fight quite comfortably. I had kept up a high work rate and boxed nicely, moving in and out, but when they announced the decision, ‘The winner of the fight and the ABA final, by the score of five points to four . . .’ I thought, ‘Fucking hell, he’s got it, hasn’t he?’ No way did I think it was that close.
But I’d won it. I’d just got through. Winning the ABAs is the pinnacle for amateurs in England, if you take out the World Championships and the Olympics. The Olympics were still three years away and my heart was always set on being a professional world champion. It would have been nice if the dates had fallen right so I could have gone to what would have been the Sydney Games, and sometimes I wish I’d tried, but as a kid I had never dreamed of Olympic gold.
I had been proud representing my country and had travelled to Cuba, Russia and Bulgaria in the amateurs, but I really just wanted to follow my heroes in boxing, and that meant aspiring to be a professional like Nigel Benn and Durán. I hung up my amateur vest and headguard and decided, coming up to the age of eighteen, to turn professional. I’d known for ages boxing was the life for me, since I was a little brat at Hattersley High School telling my teachers I was going to become a world champion.
When the ABAs were on I’d done a hell of a lot of work in Billy Graham’s Phoenix gym. It wasn’t a plush place by any means; it was a proper fighting gym, which I liked – but I was more interested by who was in there than what it looked like. I was awestruck. And I ended up sparring with quality pros such as Peter Judson, Paul Burke and Ensley Bingham, and I was later the main sparring partner for Andy Holligan as he prepared to fight Shea Neary in a huge fight in Liverpool. It was a good old-fashioned spit-and-sawdust gym, with blood on the ring canvas and where you could hear the leather of gloves colliding with Billy’s bodybelt almost non-stop. I instantly warmed to Billy and vice versa, and when I made up my mind to go pro there was no doubt who I was going to go with. At Billy’s I was training alongside Carl Thompson, Maurice Core, Bingham, Steve Foster. I was amazed being around quality fighters like that, guys who I’d seen and knew off TV and who were featured in Boxing News while I was getting noticed in the amateur section. Sparring with champions at British, Commonwealth and world level stood me in good stead. My opponents were experienced amateurs at the time and I was a comparative rookie, but the sparring made up for some of that.
The Phoenix Camp was not too big, or posh. The boxers would come in one after the other, overlapping for a laugh and a joke. The atmosphere there was priceless. Billy had boxed as a professional welterweight and middleweight between 1974 and 1976. He lost just two of fourteen fights before turning to training and learning under Manchester icon Phil Martin.
I’d been with Paul Dunne from when I was thirteen so when I went to Billy you’d think I would have had to get used to a new trainer because they have different methods and different ways – it’s sometimes like starting from scratch – but it wasn’t the case with us because me and Billy had the same thoughts and ideas. With Paul at Sale West, I used to do some work on the bodybelt, a fifteen-kilogram leather body protector that the trainer puts on over his head and is strapped on behind him. After I’d been at the Phoenix a few weeks, Billy asked me to go on the pads with him while he wore the body-belt. There were more similarities than just the bodybelt in the ways Billy and Paul trained fighters, but that piece of equipment would become our trademark.
That was one of the things that made my mind up about who would train me. I went to several gyms and learned a lot from each of them, particularly from Brian Hughes and Pat Barrett at the Collyhurst and Moston club, but I just felt Billy was a little more suited to me because I was a body puncher. Of course, I’d been known for my body shots from the amateurs, and Paul Dunne, being an old professional and very old school, had taught me the professional way – how to bob, weave and punch – and a lot of my success in the amateurs came from practically knocking everyone out with body punches in the first round. When I went to Billy and he got the bodybelt out, that was Billy’s area of expertise, and it added on to everything I was already doing.
As an amateur, I had a decent left hook to the body. That was my honey punch. But the more I worked with Billy the left hook to the body improved. Then there was the right hook to the body and we worked on changing the angles of my attacks.
As I went up through the ranks, my reputation as a body puncher grew and grew, and you could see my opponents were trying to do their homework on me. ‘That Ricky Hatton, he likes that left hand to the body, to change the angles and slip to the side, to come in behind the elbow.’ As time went on, me and Billy would have to work on a lot of different ways of getting the body shots in. ‘Listen, people have got your number with this body punching,’ he said. ‘Add a few sneaky moves in, like going to the head first. Touch them upstairs, then change the angle. Jab, knock the head back, then change the angle again. Touch him to the left-hand side so he readies himself for it, then sweep round to the right.’ Body punching is a real skill. Your arms are only so big, nowhere near as big as your body, so they can only protect so much of it. What we did, while Billy fine-tuned me on the bodybelt, was to work on both sides, aim at the solar plexus and then pivot round to land punches on the floating rib. There’s a lot more to it than people think, but it’s a fine art, and the bodybelt was our canvas.
It was fine-tuning and tweaking from where Paul had set the wheels in motion. It was like my apprenticeship with Paul was done and I’d found an equivalent in Billy.
Billy spent a lot of time with me from the beginning. ‘You’re not the biggest puncher in the world, but you throw your punches with every ounce of your body,’ he would tell me. He explained that because of my
frame and my stature some weight-training would benefit me, and I started lifting some weights in a small room upstairs above the boxing gym; heavy weights but not many sets or repetitions. He would work on me punching from my legs, turning my shoulder into my shots, moving forwards, shifting my body weight and slipping to the side. By punching with leverage, and with the added strength, it was suited to what I was doing.
In the gym I thought Billy was very clever. He had a reputation as being a bit of a conditioner, as all of his fighters were always very fit, but I thought people did him down saying that. Technically he was very good. Equally as important, I liked him straight away. He was a character, had a good sense of humour, was very knowledgeable about boxing and we kept talking about old fighters. He would ask me who my favourite fighter was and I’d always say Durán. We thought the same way, talked the same way, and when I was about eighteen he asked what I was like socially. I told him I liked to go for a pint and he went, ‘Fuck me, I’ve got one of these on my hands.’ But we chuckled about it and just clicked. We could communicate without talking, no matter what the situation was – and it was like that in the ring. That’s how it was, all the way through my career.
I suppose I had first started going out socially when I was about seventeen, although I might have sneaked into the cellar of the New Inn at about sixteen and had a cheeky drink here and there. I remember a couple of days after school we would quietly nip down there and have a couple of bottles. It doesn’t make it right, but it seemed like the normal thing to do. I wasn’t out every weekend, far from it – it was a bottle here and there. I started going out more regularly at seventeen. There was one club in Hyde that I would go into and I stuck to that. I wasn’t pubbing and clubbing, a man about town going here, there and everywhere, I wasn’t like that. There were a few pubs I could get served in and I just went to them. I didn’t venture much further afield then because boxing came first.