by Ricky Hatton
We had to pay the bill. We weren’t checking out until the following morning and we needed to think of something. We went downstairs, had another pint as we contemplated our next move, signed for it, and Billy said he would get his missus to phone the hotel room at four in the morning, get us up and we would sneak out of the hotel and go straight to the airport. We’d be all right. ‘Okay, Bill, no problem,’ I said. We went out all day and all night, signing for everything as we went along, with more and more receipts piling up on the top shelf.
‘We can’t pay that so we might as well go for gold,’ I laughed. We were spending money like Donald Trump. We were back in the nightclub that night, signed more receipts, went back to the room at about 3 a.m., where we proceeded to raid the minibar. It got to 4 a.m. when we got the phone call to say it was time and we went downstairs in the lift. The lift door opened and Billy poked his head out and the fella at reception peered up. ‘He’s looking straight at me,’ Billy whispered, trying not to laugh out loud. But when the man went into one of the rooms behind the reception I yelled, ‘Billy, go. Go, Billy.’
We came running out with our cases flying behind us, sending a standing ashtray crashing in the foyer, and dived into a waiting taxi. ‘Airport, airport!’ we shouted, and the driver set off. Then, all of a sudden, the driver went round the block and started taking us back to the hotel. ‘What’s up? What’s up?’ we shrieked. ‘You said go round the block?’ he said. ‘No, no, no. We said the fucking airport.’ He got us to the airport, finally. I never boxed in Germany again.
I won for the ninth time as a pro in October 1998 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by getting rid of Kevin Carter in a round on the Naseem Hamed–Wayne McCullough bill, and my future friend, Mexican legend Marco Antonio Barrera, boxed on the same show, stopping Englishman Richie Wenton with a body shot in three rounds. Me and Billy went out that night, all night, and it must have been about ten in the morning when we staggered into the hotel and saw Frank Warren as he was going to breakfast. I yelled, ‘Frank! All right?’ He looked over, saw this twenty-year-old leaning everywhere, and he must have thought, ‘Jesus, look at him and Billy holding each other up. That’s meant to be my future champion.’
The celebrations continued as 1998 neared a conclusion, and the Boxing Writers’ Club announced me as their Young Boxer of the Year. It was a prestigious award and near enough everyone who had earned it had gone on to win world titles. Although I was in distinguished company alongside the likes of Randolph Turpin, Terry Downes, John Conteh, Barry McGuigan, Frank Bruno, Nigel Benn and Naz, and it was nice to get the award, I didn’t really realize what it meant until I got back to the hotel in London that night and saw the roll call of champions. It hit home that it was some achievement.
I had, however, a nightmare before Christmas and it came against Paul Denton on 16 December at the Everton Park Sports Centre. Farnell and Gomez were also on the bill again. I was expected to beat Paul handily and although he had lost more than he’d won, he was better than his record suggested. By the time I boxed him, Scotland’s former world lightweight champion and Sky Sports commentator Jim Watt was calling me the most exciting prospect in the country. We had a scrappy fight, bumping heads regularly, and in the second round the skin around my left eye split open. It was a good learning contest, as it was the first time I was cut badly.
Billy worked on the cut between rounds but Denton had long arms and would pull and push to try to stop me smothering him with my attacks to the body. When I did throw punches he kept his hands high and his elbows tucked in to guard his body. ‘Don’t worry, keep calm. You’ve been cut,’ Billy said. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. Just get on with it. Stick to your boxing and don’t let it affect you and that’s the only thing you can do, really. The more you worry about it, the more it will affect your performance and you’re more likely to get hit on it again.’ Billy was very good.
Our heads kept thudding together and, although I had Denton in a bit of bother at the start of the third round, the fight carried on as it had done to that point, with me looking to attack and him looking to spoil, hold and cover, hoping the cut would cause the referee, Keith Garner, to stop it. By the sixth I just wanted him gone. I steamed out of my corner and floored him with a left hook, the first punch of the round. He went down and could not recover his feet in time.
It was another loss for Paul but he was one of those journeymen who was actually very good – it depended on which version showed up. At the weigh-in we were both a little over ten stone so he was in good shape, whereas if you fought Paul at short notice when he was at eleven stone and not in the best condition, he was not the same. That night he was awkward, he could hit and I had been too eager to impress. His record might have been ‘win some, lose some’ but he could be a tough task and I wanted to do a better job than other fighters who had boxed him before. We’d had a really tough fight, and, while the decision was not in doubt, my nerves were jangled because of the cut.
There was only a small pocket of fans watching me but they were making their voices heard; back then my fans probably could have filled a couple of minibuses, but after that stoppage you could hear them singing, ‘There’s only one Ricky Hatton’, and, as I celebrated in the ring with Billy, they chanted, ‘Hitman, give us a wave.’ It was really just my mates who went to watch me. Whether they were from the New Inn, Hattersley or around the area, the night would consist of them coming to watch me, me winning and then all of us going out on the piss. People from the Hattersley estate, or Hyde, in the area were saying, ‘There’s some young kid here called Richard Hatton. Oh, we’ll watch him. Let’s keep an eye on him.’ It was going to be a hell of a ride for all of us, my mates, my family, the area, my fans and for me; if you’d said to us back then that in a few years’ time there would thousands upon thousands going over to Vegas, or that I’d be boxing at Manchester City in front of 58,000 fans, we all would have thought you were crazy. But it was the same mates who went to Widnes, to Bristol, to Everton and who went to Vegas; the number just snowballed after each fight.
My performance against Denton on Sky had not been as impressive as I’d wanted it to be. I was rarely up to the high standards I set myself but I’d managed to catch Paul unawares with that left hook. At the time, I thought it was useful that I’d learned how to put being cut to the back of my mind and focus on winning the fight and getting on with it. When I was stitched up – it took five stitches – some of the Vaseline was not removed. It was not until many fights, and several war wounds later, that we would discover that Vaseline was still inside the skin. Consequently, in the early part of my career I became well known for getting cut, always on the same eye; people thought I wasn’t going to make it because cuts were always going to be a problem. I went to see a specialist in Harley Street in London; he cut it open and found a filthy mess inside. The Vaseline had hardened and, because it was near the surface, every time I got hit on it the cut would open up – it didn’t even need to be a good punch.
Right after the Denton fight, though, me and Billy decided that we would need a cutsman to help, so he could concentrate on what he needed to do in the corner. You only get a minute in between rounds and he wanted to give all of his attention on the advice and strategy – you don’t want to worry about cuts on top of that in just sixty seconds. I learned from my mistakes in that fight – that I was too aggressive early on. I had to be more careful because there were no longer any headguards to protect that part of my face, unlike in the amateurs. Over time, instead of locking heads, I learned how to put my head on my opponent’s shoulder rather than by his head when in close; if I shifted my body weight to throw a left hook, I would make sure my hands covered the side of my head. They were little things that I picked up with experience because, when you are as aggressive as I was as an amateur and you take that head-guard off for the professionals, you can’t be as free as I was with my head.
The cut healed well enough on the surface, and I was chomping at the bit to get
back out and fight by the time I fought my first unbeaten opponent, Tommy Peacock, at a sold-out Oldham Sports Centre eight or nine weeks after Denton. Tommy had won nine of ten fights and had drawn the other. The Central Area crown was vacant but after my eleventh win I had a belt around my waist. I had sparred with Tommy in the amateurs when he was an England Senior representative and I was boxing for Young England. And there was one squad, at Crystal Palace, where we had trained and sparred together. You wouldn’t have thought then that a few years on we would fight each other.
Gomez and Farnell scored quick wins and I joined them, stopping Tommy in two rounds. Tommy was a nice kid and had a great record, but with the manner in which I won it people started to think, ‘Maybe he has a chance of doing something here.’ Ian Darke, who was commentating for Sky Sports, said of me, ‘I think this one has the chance of going right to the very top.’ I had knocked Tommy down with a left hook and when I backed him onto the ropes and finished him with a body punch, again changing angles by stepping around, it was that kind of thing I was becoming known for. I went to the left, bang, hit him with a body shot. Then I came round hit him to the right and hit him with a right to the body, then a right uppercut, left hook, then I’d change the angle again and he didn’t have a clue where I was or where I was coming from.
That’s what Billy did with me, he made sure I hit the target, moved to the side, hit it again, went up to the head and changed the angle again. Not many kids at the age of twenty could do that. I don’t mind admitting that it looked impressive when I fired off body shots, stepped around, threw uppercuts, moved back around and worked the angles. The boxing fans liked it because it’s not the sort of thing they saw every day; one writer even said I was ‘showing the footwork of a young Roberto Durán’. More people were saying: ‘He’s got the sort of talent that could go all the way.’
I could feel myself improving with every fight. I’d seen Naseem Hamed in Madison Square Garden, I’d been on some big bills and it was becoming an obsession for me. ‘This is what I want,’ I’d think. It was just like when I was a kid, I loved to go to the gym every day and train.
The pressure should have been mounting as I progressed; perhaps I should have been more nervous before each contest, but I wasn’t. A lot of fighters struggle with pre-fight fear but I found coping with nerves before a fight got better over time, although I never suffered from them badly in the first place. Even if I was a touch jittery, I was always very good at disguising it; I always wore the same expression so people probably couldn’t tell if I was nervous, felt fear or whatever. I was never short of self-belief; confident, not arrogant with it, but I had belief in myself. In years gone by, when they said, ‘Oh, Ricky, he’s not bad but I don’t think he’s going to be a world champion. He cuts too easily, he’s too aggressive, he’s quite an exciting fighter but he probably won’t do much’, I’d think, ‘You what?’ That was a driving force for me, my motivation. Even when there was no one out there who believed in me, apart from Billy, I always had massive self-belief. We just thought people had to be seeing something different, that nobody could see what we saw.
I boxed at the Royal Albert Hall in London about six weeks after beating Peacock. Marco Antonio Barrera was on the show, looking every inch a future legend by defeating Paul Lloyd in a round – I admired him enormously. I stopped Brian Coleman, of Birmingham – also with a shot to the body in two rounds. Afterwards, I worked Ensley’s corner as he topped the bill with a second win over Nicky Thurbin.
It was time to step up once more and I was matched with a left-hander, Dillon Carew, for the vacant WBO InterContinental light-welterweight title in Halifax on a show that saw me share top billing for the first time with the two other up-and-comers from Manchester, Anthony Farnell and Michael Gomez. Me, ‘Arnie’ and Gomez were all coming up at the same time and we were all mates. There was a nice rivalry between us because you had these three rising kids from Manchester and people were asking who was the best out of the three and almost everyone had different answers. ‘Who’s going to get to the top first?’ was a frequently asked question. We weren’t bothered, but that is what the public and fans were asking. We’re still friends to this day, too, and ‘Arnie’ Farnell is now a quality trainer who brings his fighters to my gym to work with my boxers while Michael’s career burned brightly and I still see him at shows once in a while.
Anyway, Carew came in as a replacement for Mexico’s Rodolfo Gomez and he was a better fighter. He was Guyanese but based in New York and a natural at the weight, whereas Gomez, a former super-featherweight, was smaller. Carew had gone twelve rounds on two occasions, too, but I’d never been beyond six rounds. It would be my first international belt so it would bring me into a slightly different level. In the build-up, Boxing News optimistically called me ‘the new Roberto Durán’.
After five rounds, referee Roy Francis stopped my opponent on his feet. He had been on the deck once and bled from the nose, although he’d given it a good go. It didn’t make anyone’s hair stand on end, it wasn’t one of my best nights, just a steady, workmanlike performance against a tricky southpaw, and the victory got me another title.
I was 13–0 with ten early wins going into a fight with Mexican David Ojeda in Doncaster, but at short notice I ended up facing Mark Ramsey once again instead, and I didn’t look good. In fact, I got booed for the first time, as I failed to meet the growing expectations around me.
Despite their different names, Ramsey was Paul Denton’s brother. ‘I don’t know what it is with these Ramsey brothers but they must have heads like rocks,’ I told the press. ‘People expect me to look a million dollars every time,’ I continued. ‘You can’t. He was switching a lot and caught me with a few punches.’ It was a bit of a nightmare, really. I was due to fight Ojeda, who had a decent record but we didn’t know much about him. Me and Billy decided not to take the chance at such an early stage so another opponent was drafted in with about a day’s notice, and in some ways I struggled to get motivated for it. Trainer Nobby Nobbs was the go-to man in British boxing, if you needed an opponent at twenty-four hours’ notice then you called Nobby. He provided opponents to save shows up and down the country when someone pulled out or couldn’t make it for whatever reason, as he always had a fighter willing to step in. So I arrived at the venue in Doncaster and I saw Nobby sat at the back of the room with Paul Denton and I went to Billy, as I looked round for Mark Ramsey, who I couldn’t see any sign of, and I said, ‘Where’s fucking Ramsey, I’m fighting him, aren’t I?’ Then I said to Billy, ‘Billy, Paul Denton is sat there with Nobby. Hang on, wasn’t Denton called Ramsey once? Am I fighting him? Or am I fighting Mark Ramsey?’
‘I’ll go and have a look for Ramsey,’ Billy said.
He couldn’t see him anywhere. So Billy went straight to Nobby and said, ‘We’re fighting Mark Ramsey, aren’t we? I can’t see him anywhere. Is he here? We’ve seen Paul Denton. Which one are we fighting?’
‘Billy,’ said Nobby. ‘I don’t have a clue. I have a red phone and a blue phone at home and the blue phone rang.’
So it wasn’t long before the fight and I was thinking, ‘Who am I fighting here?’
I got into the ring, and it was Mark Ramsey. I got cut from a clash of heads and I never got going. The crowd started booing and it wound me up. Actually I was furious. All I wanted to do was please the fans, and I was trying to build my reputation so there’s nothing worse than stinking the place out. In my forty-eight-fight career I think that was probably my worst performance. I was sick with it. I hadn’t been properly motivated, didn’t know who I was fighting, then I got cut. Mark was a southpaw, a switcher and someone who could fiddle his way through fights, and, although I won clearly enough, it was the first and only time I got booed and I deserved it. I had been built up to be exciting every fight and I bet the people of Doncaster thought, ‘What the hell have they been watching, to say that?’
It was that bad. But it’s part of the game. You get fights that don’t happen. You ge
t fights at short notice or your opponent changes and you still have to go in there and do the job, and that night I didn’t live up to the hype. You love to get the pats on the back when you perform well, but you have to be man enough to take the knocks when you’re shit. And that’s one night I can honestly say I deserved to take them.
The cut kept me out almost three months. When I returned I was back on the top of the bill with Farnell again, defending our WBO Inter-Continental titles. I always had a good following but at the time I think Gomez and Farnell, always good ticket-sellers, might have sold a few more tickets than me here and there, while I was starting to get a bit of a reputation for enjoying myself.
I was around twenty or twenty-one when me and Billy started socializing. When I was doing the four-or six-rounders, and sometimes I’d have up to seven fights a year, I was in the gym every day so there wasn’t much time to get out. Then, when I got up to championship level, as Inter-Continental champion and further up, when I started doing twelve rounds and having about four fights a year, you spend days in training camps rather than every day in the gym.
As I got older, me and Billy got closer and closer; we didn’t go out drinking from day one, but by the time I started fighting for titles we were bestest mates. I think a few of the fighters might have been jealous of the relationship me and Billy had, but we suddenly found there was more time to let our hair down. We weren’t in the pub together every night but after a fight we would go out and celebrate. They were good times and Billy really got to know me. I can be a very stubborn person too, mind. I suppose I just love an argument and it takes me a time to admit if I’m wrong. If someone turns round and tells me I can’t do something I will try to do it. Even when it comes to things like football and City games, I’ll argue and argue. One thing with me, you’ll always get an honest answer. If I’m wrong, I might not admit it at first, but eventually I can say, ‘I got it wrong.’ But I love being right.