War and Peace

by Ricky Hatton

  However, professional boxing is a business and the money side of things still needed to be taken care of. As a ticket-seller who had boxed for England, won about seventy of seventy-five fights, had won the ABAs and was turning professional as the number one in my weight class in the country, I had earned an audience with the country’s biggest promoters, Barry Hearn, Frank Maloney and Frank Warren – three very different individuals. I always liked Barry. We got on well and, even though I did not sign with him, he would always invite me to the darts, to Fish ‘O’ Mania and other shows that Matchroom Sport did; there were no hard feelings. Maloney was the most bubbly of the three, more of a character; I also got on well with him. He was up my street in that we could have a joke and a bit of banter. We’ve always been able to have a giggle.

  Frank Warren was the biggest promoter around at the time and it was the biggest decision of my life. Warren was very smooth; there was a bit of an aura around him and a lot of sense in what he said and the way he explained things to me. He was promoting Naseem Hamed, and Carl Thompson (who Billy also trained). He’d got big contests for many of his fighters with top Americans, including matching Winky Wright with Ensley Bingham, another of my stablemates, and it seemed the right move. Frank was the main promoter, and because Billy had so many fighters in the same stable it was a no-brainer.

  There were detractors, of course. Frank was with Sky Sports, who were growing into boxing, and people said, ‘Well, you won’t get the same audience. You need to go with terrestrial TV,’ or, ‘You’re not going to be in as many living rooms and you won’t do this and that . . .’ There were some who said Sky wouldn’t be in boxing five minutes and that seems ironic, now. My fanbase came from Sky so that’s put that all to bed. What happened in my career would go on to tell every other British fighter who was considering signing to be on Sky not to listen to arguments about terrestrial TV – look what happened with me. From day one I was solely on Sky; Joe Calzaghe, Naseem Hamed, Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn had all been on Sky but they’d all had exposure on terrestrial TV first. Sky are now the biggest broadcasters in British boxing, and I’d like to think I had a part to play in that for them.

  At the time Frank had everyone. He was flying high, the leading promoter in Britain by a country mile, and Naz was getting ready to make his debut in America. I thought it was the best move all round when I signed for Frank. It was May 1997, at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, on the eve of one of his big shows at the MEN Arena; Naz was going to fight Billy Hardy, Robin Reid fought Henry Wharton and Steve Foster, another gym-mate, boxed Winky Wright. I put pen to paper with my dad and Billy next to me; my dad and myself were new to the pro game so Billy would advise us a lot of the time in those early days. That was fine by me. We were all very close and Frank gave me free tickets for the Naz–Hardy fight. I had blond, spiky hair, and I’ve seen footage of the fight and I was ringside with these ridiculous six-foot spikes, done up to the nines, wearing the most horrific green shirt you’ve ever seen in your life. At the time I thought it was cool as fuck. I’d signed my contract, was ringside at a packed MEN, and I remember thinking, ‘I want to be here, one day.’

  But you never believe it. You never think you will do what your heroes have done.

  CHAPTER 3

  Turning Pro

  ‘There’s been a discrepancy with your medical,’ said a voice at the other end of the phone.

  According to the British Boxing Board of Control, I would not be allowed to make my debut on a bill topped by Naseem Hamed defending his world titles against Juan Gerardo Cabrera at the Wembley Arena. Worse still, I thought my career was over before it could begin. The Board of Control said they needed to do further tests on my heart and until they did those they would not let me box. I was devastated – I had just been about to jump in my car and head down to the weigh-in; now, aged eighteen and before even throwing a punch as a professional, it wasn’t certain I would ever fight again. I thought it was over and I couldn’t believe it.

  We made an immediate appointment to see a specialist. I was told it was a heart murmur that might have developed because I’d done so much sport from a young age, as I’d been kick-boxing from seven and boxing from ten. The doctors said it was something small that must have happened over the years and it would in no way hinder my career. So, after this short delay, I made my debut on 11 September 1997 at the Kingsway Leisure Centre in Widnes on a bill topped by Robin Reid, defending his WBC super-middleweight world title against tough Frenchman Hacine Cherifi. I was scheduled to fight in what is called a floating contest, meaning that if any of the main fights ended in an early knockout, I would go out and fill the time before a more significant bout. It turned out there were no such gaps in the show and, although I was gloved up and ready by 8 p.m., I did not fight until midnight.

  Even then there was a delay. After retaining his title over twelve hard rounds, Robin collapsed with heat exhaustion in the dressing room, where the paramedics rushed to his aid. He was fine, but we had to wait for the medics to get back to ringside before me and my opponent from Doncaster, Colin ‘Kid’ McAuley, could start fighting – for a good fifteen minutes. McAuley, who had won eight of about sixty fights, sat on his stool while I shadow-boxed in my corner. As if you’re not nervous enough on your professional debut anyway, I was just hanging about in the ring, trying to keep warm, thinking, ‘Please just let’s get the bell rung.’ It was the last fight of the night so only a few friends and regulars from the New Inn stayed behind to see me. Oh, and the fellas sweeping up.

  I knocked out ‘Kid’ McAuley with a body shot in the first round. He went down into his corner and Nobby Nobbs, his trainer, seemed to be counting with him so he would know when to stand back up. But he didn’t, he tried to recover but threw up into his spit bucket. Sickening body shots became my calling card of sorts.

  British boxing was buzzing as Naseem Hamed prepared for his big American debut in New York. He was matched with the brash local Kevin Kelley in a December mega-event at Madison Square Garden, and Frank Warren put me on the undercard. Billy couldn’t come as he was working Ensley Bingham’s corner in a British title fight against Nicky Thurbin on the same night, so I went on my own. Over there, I palled up with the British heavyweight contender Danny Williams; we got on really well, but I was shocked at how nervous Danny was for his fight. He’d had about ten bouts but suffered unbelievably with nerves. On the morning of the fight, I sat there chowing down eggs, bacon, sausage and beans – while Danny pushed a bit of porridge around the bowl saying, ‘Urgh, I can’t eat anything.’ I was eighteen years old, big Danny was eighteen stone, and he said, ‘Oh, Rick, I can’t eat this. I can’t do it.’ I couldn’t understand how a heavyweight as big and talented as him was so nervous before a fight. ‘Don’t worry, Dan, you’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘Just get on with it, you’ll be fine.’ He put on a wicked performance; he was a hell of a fighter. He achieved so much, but considering his early promise, and even though he went on to beat Mike Tyson, I don’t think he fulfilled his potential.

  That said, things couldn’t have been much worse for me out there. Without Billy I was more anxious myself; at the weigh-in I was about ten stone and half a pound, while my opponent, a Brooklyn welterweight called Robert Alvarez, weighed around ten stone seven. So they sent me around the corner to eat a few doughnuts and have something to drink, while Alvarez went running around New York to lose some weight. By the time I came back I was about ten-one and by the time he came back he was about ten-five and the commission said we could fight each other. He was naturally a lot bigger than me and he’d had four fights and won a couple. He was covered in tattoos and he dwarfed me; he had more hair on his chest than I had on my basin haircut and I was as white as you could imagine. You can guess how I felt: ‘Oh Billy, where are you?!’

  It didn’t get any easier when I was being introduced by Hall of Fame ring announcer Michael Buffer at Madison Square Garden in front of a heavyweight legend, and former heavyweight champion of the world,
George Foreman; only a few months earlier I’d been boxing as an amateur at the Salford Working Men’s Club. It was the first time Michael introduced me to the fans; it wasn’t the ‘Let’s get ready to rumble’ introduction he did for the main event, and back then I was known as Richard Hatton, not Ricky Hatton. However, I won a unanimous points decision over four rounds and had Alvarez bleeding from the nose and mouth. Foreman, who was working for US TV giants HBO, said I looked a good prospect and that people should keep an eye on me.

  I was sat at ringside after my fight to watch Naz in his thriller with Kelley; there was eighteen-year-old me, and there was Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and any number of top celebrities. I was almost looking at them more than I was the fight, I was just in awe of the whole occasion. The last time I’d been in America, just a few years earlier with my mum, dad and Matthew, I had been in awe of Mickey Mouse and Goofy at Disney World in Florida. Now, just a month after my eighteenth birthday, I had one of the best seats in the house to watch what was a real war between Naz and Kelley, as they exchanged knockdowns before Hamed stopped the New Yorker.

  It was a much more memorable night than my eighteenth birthday party, that’s for sure, although I only had myself to blame for that. In typical Ricky Hatton fashion, that hadn’t lasted very long.

  We still lived in the New Inn at the time and my mum and dad held a bash for me in the pub. People on the estate could see me doing well, and when they put on that party for me it was packed to the rafters. I think I was very well thought of on the estate, and I felt that all of the customers were fond of me – and I enjoyed being around them. That night, we had a disco, a singer and a buffet. It was a happy time but, as you can imagine, two pints of lager at that age knocked me on my arse. I’m afraid to say I was in bed for half ten.

  Less than a month after boxing at the famed Madison Square Garden I was out on a bill at the Whitchurch Leisure Centre in Bristol. People see the bright lights of Las Vegas and the big fights later on, and think, ‘Hasn’t he had it good, him?’ I hadn’t had it good. It’s tough. It’s not all caviar and skittles. I had to work from the bottom up and that is one of my best attributes, I always loved a challenge. Whether it was boxing at a small hall or in a big venue, I loved the challenge of the fight and nothing ever fazed me, and it’s the best preparation you can have if you can say one day you’ve fought in New York, the next you’ve been in Bristol, then you’re at Everton Park, the Liverpool Olympia or in Germany. That’s part of the education.

  And this was how it was going to be for me for a couple of years, at least. I would get tantalizing glimpses of the boxing career I wanted to have – that I believed I would have – when I saw the main-event fighters on the bill and the hype around them and the adulation they received. I knew the sport well enough to know that to get there I had to climb every rung of the ladder. I would have to work my way up, fight after fight. Life would be split between the gym and fights every month or so. It was a relentless schedule with no partying, as I stayed in shape, waiting on calls to appear on any bill possible. I needed to test myself every time in a different way, each time reaching that little bit further up the ladder, each time getting closer to my goal. I can look back at it now and see the progress I made, how each bout brought me a fresh challenge, but at the time it was a proper slog. It looks like a steady progression but at the time it felt like anything but. It was important though, I was learning the ropes.

  At the Whitchurch Leisure Centre, I was picking Hull’s David Thompson off with good shots and pretty much catching him at will, and by the time the last punch came he just thought it was better off being over. He’d been down four times before it was stopped in round one.

  I took my seat next to Billy in time to watch Glenn Catley beat Neville Brown in the main event that night in a battle that was good for me to watch. In my first three fights I’d had things my own way, and as Catley and Brown eyed each other up Billy tapped me and said, ‘Notice how they hold, nudge each other, how they put the shoulder in and so on. That’s how they do it.’ Glenn gave Neville a right roughing up. ‘Don’t think it’s always going to be easy,’ Billy said. ‘This is how brutal it’s going to get.’ My eyes just lit up, I’d always liked rough fights: ‘Lovely.’

  But I was also experiencing boxing on many levels and Billy even had me working in the corner with him for some of his other boxers because he said I was learning the game so well and had an old head on young shoulders. I was in the corner as a youngster for a lot of the fights of Ensley Bingham, Carl Thompson and Peter Judson. I got used to being around big fights, tough fights, wars. I was in the corner for the great Thompson–Eubank fights. I was boxing, sparring, training with good fighters, so when the time came for me, I was well prepared.

  A couple of months later, I fought at Telford Ice Rink, down the bill against Plymouth’s Paul Salmon. Richie Woodhall beat Thulani ‘Sugarboy’ Malinga for the WBC super-middleweight title.

  As I said earlier, I’d been sparring with Andy Holligan ahead of his huge domestic grudge match with Shea Neary, and I’d even injured his ribs so I was more than ready for my opponent, who was a novice if you compared him to the guys I was training with in Billy’s gym. I caught Salmon twice in 107 seconds, flooring him both times, to win in the first; a left hook to the head downed him the first time, a right to the body finished him and he never boxed again, retiring with four wins against thirteen losses.

  Next I went in with Karl Taylor at Manchester’s NYNEX Arena, as it was then, as part of a huge bill headlined by the cruiserweight war between Chris Eubank and Carl Thompson. Naz also featured, as did Herbie Hide. Myself and two other rising Mancunians, Anthony Farnell and Michael Gomez, were on the show, and there was a lot of attention on the three of us. Taylor was not expected to give me a test but he was meant to give me rounds; generally he knew how to survive and mess you around and could look after himself well enough. He’d only won a dozen of fifty or so fights but he wasn’t often stopped. Our fight lasted only 105 seconds – my body shots won it.

  I was back at the Whitchurch Leisure Centre a month later, defeating one of Nobby Nobbs’s boys, Mark Ramsey. He was okay, but I floored him twice, once in round two and again in the third, and won our six-rounder comfortably. In Mark’s corner, Nobby was funny. Boxing has many great characters like him and, against both Karl Taylor and Mark Ramsey, if one of his fighters had me in a corner and swung at me, or just missed, Nobby would shout, ‘Oooo, stop it ref, he’s got him.’ There’s no harm in trying.

  I was in Sheffield next, on a bill topped by the Thompson– Eubank rematch, and I banked another six rounds, this time against London’s Anthony Campbell. He didn’t have a great record but he could fight, and two bouts later he upset future world-title-challenger Phillip Ndou in three rounds.

  I had been a pro for a year and had won seven fights. I’d received a signing-on fee from Frank Warren when we did our deal and I was on £3,000 per fight. Twenty-one grand a year, plus a signing-on fee; for an eighteen-year-old previously getting about £200 a week carpet-fitting, badly, I was having the time of my life. I’d ask the lads on the estate, ‘Hey, mate, are you coming out? I’ve got some money.’ I’ve never been arrogant but I have shared what I’ve had: ‘Here’s fifty for you, fifty for you, let’s go out.’ Before I knew it I’d done all my money and my tax bills were coming in. I had the same shitty red Metro for three years because I blew all my money, I couldn’t even buy a new car. At the gym in Salford I used to have to park up the hill and take one of my mates with me to the gym to push it and bump-start it.

  At one stage, when I was three grand overdrawn, my dad said it was the hardest career in the world and I was going to have nothing to show for it. He said, ‘This can’t continue,’ so we set up a company, Punch Promotions, and I would be paid a regular wage from that, with my dad organizing it for me.

  I was kept busy, though, and that’s what good prospects need. Just a couple of months after defeating Campbell I was out in
Germany, boxing Pascal Montulet. Just shy of my twentieth birthday, it was my eighth fight. I dropped Montulet with a left to his stomach and he took a standing count as I turned the screws, honing in on his stomach. He was not a bad fighter but I caught him with a big right uppercut and when he bounced off the ropes I stepped to the side and nailed him with a body shot. It almost lifted him off his feet. Although he bravely rose, the fight was waved off, and quite right, too. It was around that time that more people had started talking about me; I wasn’t just steamrolling people, I was doing it in a certain manner, and with moves that were impressing observers.

  That trip was more memorable for what happened outside the ring than inside it. Me and Billy didn’t have a pot to piss in at the time, we used to ask Frank for a few quid first to see us through before we got anywhere. In the build-up to the fight at the hotel, I’d have a cup of tea and Billy would have a pint; we’d sign for the bill, and they’d stash the receipts on the top shelf behind the counter. We just had to settle up when we checked out. After the fight, we went back to our hotel where there was a nightclub in the basement. We started signing for cocktails, and the bits of paper were piling up on the top shelf. The next day, we got up early and asked to be put through to Frank’s room. ‘Sorry, he has checked out,’ they said.

  We asked for some of the other Sports Network staff. ‘No, they have all checked out now.’

  ‘Oh right. Can you give me a rundown of my bill, please?’ Mine was about four hundred and fifty quid and Billy’s was about a hundred more.

  ‘What have you got on you?’ Billy asked.

  ‘About seventy quid. What have you got on you?’

  ‘About two hundred quid.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ we said together.

  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.