by Ricky Hatton
I saw Ed Robinson, a boxing reporter for Sky Sports, who was the first person I’d seen since the opponent changed and he told me I was fighting Denmark’s Dennis Pedersen. Pedersen was a super-featherweight moving up. He was listed at five-foot eight but seemed about five-foot five. My training to prepare me for a puncher at light-welterweight, and a tall one at that, was wasted. I stopped Pedersen in six rounds and it wasn’t the worst performance in the world but no one really took any serious notice of it.
Then I fought another Argentine in Carlos Wilfredo Vilches at short notice and struggled to a points win. I had ripped a load of weight off and after four or five rounds I felt I was gone, I was spent. But I sucked it up. Billy said to me in the corner, ‘Come on, you knew this was going to happen. We’ll get through this.’ I was going off the boil, though, and the press were agreeing with me. I went six rounds with a super-featherweight like Pedersen and, with all of the hype that had gone before, some were turning round and saying, ‘Well, he’s struggling a bit, now. Maybe he’s found his level.’ I knew I hadn’t.
Any boxer, footballer, sportsman or anyone who wants to be the best in the field they’re in, they need something to get their juices flowing to perform at their best. Rios, Pedersen and Vilches were run-of-the-mill opponents and I was expected to knock them out and it was as if we’d hit a brick wall. I had plateaued. I was young, ambitious and growing impatient; but Frank was perfect at bringing the right opponents in at the right time, not letting me off the leash before my time was actually ready. I learned a lot promotion-wise from Frank Warren.
My dad was looking after the money I made and I was still paid wages for my fights. He was getting more involved in my career to help with the business side of things and was speaking to Frank on my behalf. We’d felt it was always better that way, so I could concentrate on the training and the boxing, and he would tell me about what he was doing with the money, what accounts he was moving it into and why and what investments he was making on my behalf. I didn’t have a lot of luxuries but I ‘invested’ in one of the original three-wheeler Robin Reliants from Only Fools and Horses. I’ve always been a big fan of the show and back during these WBU days I used to drive it around Hyde, Gee Cross and Hattersley, wearing my big sheepskin coat and my Del Boy hat. Everyone probably thought I’d lost the plot! I like to think I have a good sense of humour; I always like a good practical joke and I’ve always been game for a laugh and I loved that car. I’ve still got it but I can’t take it out any more, it’s too old and I’d probably end up killing myself in it.
I’m not a flash type, but it was one of my few extravagances. I wasn’t into the usual stuff that often goes hand in hand with celebrity and fame. I was invited to certain dos, events, openings, red-carpet nights – and you would never see me there. You would see me in the pub playing darts or in the stands watching City, so the car was a real treat for me.
By the time the fight with Michael Stewart came around it was something of a turning point because if I beat him I would become the mandatory contender for Kostya Tszyu, the IBF champion. I know boxing and I thought, ‘The minute I get in that mandatory position, nothing else will matter. I will be there.’ I was back up for that Stewart fight, really motivated as it was the eliminator for the world title and to face the top man in the division. If I couldn’t get up for that, there would have been something wrong with me and I knew Stewart was a decent fighter.
Called ‘No Joke’, Stewart had fought Sharmba Mitchell on the same night I’d boxed Pedersen, when Mitchell earned his shot at Tszyu. Stewart, from Delaware, was a good fighter; he was a bit of a puncher, he liked to stand and have a fight, which was right up my street, and I delivered, showing my variety. I knocked him down with a left hook to the body, then a double right-hand jab to the chin, and three left hooks eventually finished him in round five and it was as if everyone was saying, ‘That’s the Ricky Hatton we knew.’ It turned out to be the only stoppage loss in a career that spanned sixty fights for Stewart, and I was now in the mandatory spot. ‘You know what, this is definitely going to happen,’ I said to myself. ‘I’m on pole position.’
However, Kostya Tszyu, who had injury issues and still had to face his leading challenger in Sharmba Mitchell, was going to be tied up for a while, so in the meantime I wanted to keep busy. Perhaps it would have been wise not to have fought and not take any chances, but I fought Ray Oliveira – which, when you think the Tszyu fight was already there waiting for me, was a massive gamble. I ran the risk of getting cut, hurt or, worse still, beaten. But if I didn’t fight then I would have been on the sidelines for several months and that meant hanging about when I always liked to keep busy – so we signed for Oliveira.
When I look back over my time as the WBU champion, I think that performance was one of my best. He was a very experienced fighter who threw a lot of punches and he knew how to look after himself really well; it was brutal on my part. I systematically took him apart. Round after round I would chip away and in the end he had blood coming out of his ears.
It was the perfect fight to sharpen my tools for Tszyu. I don’t think I was ever in any danger of losing, but there was always the feeling that Oliveira, who came from Massachusetts and owned good wins over Vince Phillips and future champion Vivian Harris, would cause me a few problems because of his style. He had a defence where he would cover up in a shell to protect his chin, I was struggling to land anything upstairs so I was throwing jabs, trying to connect with a hook and then using my right and looking to score with right hooks. He protected his face, but the hooks were getting in round the side of his head, just by the ears. The punches thudded in, horrendous-sounding shots like the right hook that dropped him in the opening session. It was a beat-down – round after round I clubbed away around his high guard, until I trapped him in the corner. I was really putting my punches together in round ten. I fired off a screw shot, followed it with a right hand and he went down. He was clutching his ears and was in such pain and agony that he looked at his corner to tell them he couldn’t go on, and I could see the blood running down from his ears from where all of those hooks had been landing around the side.
It had been the perfect fight and the perfect performance; he’d defeated world champions in Harris and Phillips, had gone the distance with top fighters like Vernon Forrest, and in fifty-nine fights I was the first man to stop him. My tools couldn’t have been any sharper for Kostya Tszyu. I felt I was more than ready.
When I look back on those WBU days, I do so with massive affection. Those fights helped make me the fighter I became, and Frank Warren promoted me perfectly. At the time I thought I was becoming stale and was getting frustrated, but I think the WBU fights built my fanbase. The WBU also took a little bit of the pressure off me because it was not one of the major governing bodies, but that title ultimately got me a fight with Tszyu and it got me ranked. Even though people looked down on the WBU belt, when you think of Ben Tackie and Vince Phillips and Ray Oliveira, they could have fought for any title. They got me where I needed to be and I look back at the WBU fights as where I had my apprenticeship for the world stage. Don’t forget, it got me to the number one contender spot to fight Kostya Tszyu and you don’t get to be number one contender – to fight the best in the division – if you’re fighting a load of muppets. I made the WBU title what it was; that sounds a bit arrogant on my part, and I don’t mean for it to sound that way, but a title’s only worth the people who are fighting for it. I’d fought movers, stronger opponents, scrappers, southpaws, and I’d showed my ability.
When your big opportunity comes, for me or any fighter, you want to know that you’ve experienced it all. You want to have been knocked down and know you can get up. You want to have been hurt and know you can hold on and ride out a storm. You want to know that you can fight on, even if you can hardly see through the blood, or that you can fight twelve rounds at a frantic pace. You want to know that, if you’re given one more round before they stop the fight, you can turn it around
. You want to know that you have boxed at home and abroad, that you’ve been hit, hurt and shaken and there was nothing you haven’t faced, so that whatever happens in that big fight, on your big night, there is nothing that you haven’t seen or felt. When I look back at my preparations for fighting the best in the world in Kostya Tszyu, could it have been any better? I couldn’t have done any more. When you can say that, you can’t have any better preparation. I was ready and I knew it.
CHAPTER 6
Destiny
Billy Graham nicked the gloves after my pro debut. From day one he was saying, ‘I think this kid’s going to go all the way. He’s going to be in the big fights. Not just world title fights but the big fights.’ When he saved my gloves, he had done so planning for this moment.
It was about half eight at night the evening before I was going to fight Kostya Tszyu, when a taxi pulled up outside the house. The driver came to the door and presented me with a glass case; inside it were the gloves from my professional debut, and a couple of pictures of the fight against Kid McAuley at the leisure centre in Widnes. There was also a picture of me and Billy from that night and a small engraved plaque, which read: ‘Dear Ricky, I always knew this day would come. Love you. Billy.’
It reaffirmed my own belief that this was it. There was no going back, but we were ready for what we were about to face, and we were facing it together.
Although there are four world titles these days with the WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF, Kostya Tszyu was the number one fighter in the weight class, and many said he was the best fighter in the world. Being a world champion does not necessarily mean you’re number one. The aim for me and Billy was not just to be a world champion but to be the best in the division.
Our day of days was almost here. We were always sure it would come – even if that was not a popular assessment elsewhere – as our belief in our own fate and our destiny was unshakeable. Billy and I also had a fair idea over the last couple of years that when my chance did come, it would be against the formidable Australia-based Russian Tszyu.
I had seen Tszyu fight before, when I went to Las Vegas to watch him against top American Zab Judah in November 2001. It was my first trip to Sin City, and I had just defeated veteran American Freddie Pendleton the week earlier, so me and Billy saw it as a scouting mission, and, typically, as a jolly. As a big Elvis fan who enjoyed a night on the tiles once in a while, it’s fair to say I liked Las Vegas from the start.
I was ringside at the fight, working as a pundit for Sky Sports. Judah won the first round, but Kostya’s one-punch power was incredible and he wiped him out in the second with that right hand. Judah felt he could carry on but his legs had gone, and as he tried to make his point he launched his stool at the referee.
The next morning, after me and Billy had been out all night, of course, we were hung-over and checking out of the MGM Grand when we saw a group in their black Team Kostya tracksuits and T-shirts. I turned to Billy, ‘There’s Kostya Tszyu, Billy. I should go and congratulate him.’ I went over, with the fumes on my breath from the beer the night before, and said, ‘Hey, Kostya. Well done last night. Congratulations.’ He politely thanked me. I said, ‘My name’s Ricky Hatton. I’ve just got into the top ten. I think I will fight you in a couple of years.’ Shocked and probably embarrassed, for me as much as himself, he said, ‘Ah, all right. Nice one.’ He must have thought, ‘Who’s this fucking drunk?’
But neither of us forgot this encounter; Kostya mentioned it at the press conference when we announced the fight. ‘I remember you pulling me to one side in Vegas. You said you would fight me, didn’t you?’ he said. I didn’t think he had taken it seriously but I was made up that he remembered. You can only imagine one of the best fighters in the world being told by a drunk Brit on a jolly in Vegas saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll fight you in a few years!’ Of course you will, mate.
The bookmakers had the same doubts. You could get me at as much as a 5–1 as an underdog. I never gambled on any of my fights but a couple of my friends bet on this one.
A lot of my stories seem to have a pint involved, but I was out with my mates, having a pint, and it was twelve weeks before the fight. I was in Manchester in a place called the Press Club, the last place open where you could get a late drink. It must have been about five in the morning and I put my pint down. ‘Right, that’s me done for twelve weeks,’ I said. ‘I’m going home now, fellas.’ As I got up to leave, I turned to them and said, ‘Listen, I know I’m pissed and I’ve had a drink, but I told you this last week, I’m going to fucking beat that Tszyu. Five-to-one. Get your money on it.’ They looked at me and laughed. I turned round and staggered out. I bet they thought, ‘Yeah, yeah. Shut up you drunken fucking idiot.’ But I was so sure. It was just how I felt.
Camp was strict; I lived like a monk and I ate, slept and breathed Kostya Tszyu, watching footage of him day in and day out. Of all of the fighters in my weight class at the time, he was the best. He had been inactive because he’d had shoulder surgery and then been out, but he came back and fought the number one contender, Sharmba Mitchell. A lot of people thought Mitchell would beat him, but Tszyu just splattered him. Even though Kostya had been out for twenty-two months, he floored him four times and stopped him in three rounds. He could be devastating.
Critics said there was a gap in class to Tszyu from the opponents I had been fighting, and there was, but it wasn’t about who I was beating, it was the manner of the victories that had given me confidence.
I went to the MEN Arena a few days before the fight, as Sky were filming me for a big build-up and they wanted me at the venue. The seats weren’t in and I just looked at the size of the place. It was cavernous and hard to believe how alive it would come in just a couple of days’ time. It almost took my breath away imagining how it was going to be that Saturday night.
The first time it really hit home about how big the fight was, came when we were at the press conference – there had always been plenty of press covering my fights, but this was different. There were video cameras everywhere, from all over the world, and flash bulbs going off left, right and centre. ‘Fuck me,’ I thought. ‘This is the big time. This is a little bit different to where you’ve previously been before, Ricky.’ People might not have shared my enthusiasm, but this was what I had dreamed of, what I was destined for.
Me and Billy spent so much time formulating the strategy. We knew that Tszyu would be trying to line me up for the right hand; the power in his punch came at the end of the shot, it exploded when his arm was stretched. It wasn’t a short right hand; he had to have it extended. I needed to jab and move in on him quickly, so when he did land the right hand – and we knew he would get it on me, based on the philosophy you can’t walk in the rain without getting wet – he would be so close that it would not allow him the space to extend the arm, and I would be taking the sting out of the punch.
Ours was a dangerous strategy; they were brave tactics. There was a reason he kept knocking people out and it was because they gave ground. In their fights against him, both Judah and Sharmba Mitchell had kept pulling away from him to the point where his right hand was at its most ferocious, and they got their heads taken off. If I jumped on his chest then perhaps he would win some rounds, but if I was walking through his right hand and taking the edge off it, then his confidence would evaporate later on. Risky, yes – but my confidence was unbreakable.
Frank Warren had done the deal to bring the thirty-five-year-old over to Manchester, and because of the demands of US television giant Showtime the fight would start at two in the morning. It was my first fight on SKY Box Office, and I expect it had to be done that way to pay us what we both needed for a contest of that magnitude. I knew Tszyu – who had come over two weeks before fight night with an entourage of twelve to help him finish his fine-tuning – was making far more than me, as the champion and the fighter making the concessions in terms of conceding home advantage and boxing at an unusual time.
To deal with the late start time, I was
doing my roadwork at midnight instead of in the morning, but it is hard to be tired when you have that sort of fight in front of you. Nothing could have made me tired or fazed me for facing Kostya Tszyu, not even the police who one night stopped me, thinking the guy running with a hoodie pulled over his head had committed a crime and was legging it from the scene.
I sparred with a couple of Argentinians and they were really good, giving me great work throughout camp. But the confidence within my team was not shared universally. When I beat Magee and the others and I was saying I wanted to fight Tszyu, I don’t think anyone took me seriously. People thought I was a good fighter, that I sold loads of tickets and was exciting, but I really don’t think people thought I was going to get that far. Yet I knew. I knew I was, I honestly believed I was going to do it. Others, however, thought, ‘Yeah, Ricky’s okay, he gets cut, but Kostya Tszyu? No. No way.’ That gave me incredible motivation. I would always think of people telling me I couldn’t do it and I’d run faster, spar harder and train longer.
I was consumed by Kostya Tszyu. If I’d beaten one of the other champions, a Vivian Harris or Sharmba Mitchell, all I would have heard would have been, ‘Yeah, but he will never defeat Tszyu.’ I wanted to beat the best so no one could say otherwise – I had to beat him.
I was the underdog but the fans more than got behind me. All 22,000 tickets sold out in five hours, and on the night it was electric. Even though it was two in the morning, Manchester was watching – the world was paying attention. Everyone was excited but in the same breath they were nervous because of how aggressive I was. With someone like Kostya Tszyu – a puncher with that rocket-launcher right cross – people thought I would be easy to hit and that it could have been a recipe for disaster.