War and Peace

by Ricky Hatton

  The first day back is always hard. ‘Come on, Billy, are we doing some pads?’ I ask. ‘You’re going nowhere near the fucking pads, you,’ he replies. ‘Get on the treadmill. Get on the stepper. Get working out on the bag and start shifting that fucking weight.’ I call it the monastery – you can do a training camp in eight or nine weeks, but mine have to be twelve, so I can shed this extra weight. I follow every instruction Billy and Kerry give me, without fail: ‘This is what time you get up. This is what time you eat. This is what time you go to the gym. This is what time you sleep. This is what time you run.’

  I start off doing the same run, the back roads from Gee Cross where I live to Hattersley estate, near where I grew up – about three or four miles in all – but the minute I get near a hill I have to stop. The roads are quiet, so quiet that I can hear cars coming from some distance. Shit, a car’s coming. The minute I hear that I start running again, hill or no hill. I’m not having anyone seeing me walking on a run. Sometimes when I stop and a car might catch me having a break the driver winds his window down and jokes, ‘Come on, Ricky, get moving, you fat bastard’ and I pick it up again. I trained at twelve or twelve thirty and did my roadwork in the evening. It worked well for me. I could have breakfast, fuel up for the day, train, have an evening meal, go for my run, have a snack and then go to bed.

  Later, I might wish I could find a happy medium but here and now I take the supplements and vitamins given to me, eat what I am told and don’t go near anything I should not. I live by every rule, I never cave. I never give in to temptation. Twelve weeks. No cracking. Not once. I can pride myself on that. I was a role model with my attitude and character, being down to earth, the perfect role model in that respect. But when you looked at me, I wasn’t; I wasn’t easy on the eye when I was so heavy and it was not good for kids to see.

  Strangely I was quite proud of being called Ricky Fatton. I’ve never been a vain person and I don’t get embarrassed, but it’s probably the worst quality I could have. You should really care about your appearance and what you look like. My mentality has changed since then. Young kids seeing me in between fights and out of shape? It wasn’t the best, was it? I wouldn’t change too much about my life, but one of the things would be the attitude between fights. People would say I had a lack of dedication, but to do what I did and get my body from where it was to what it became on fight night, I think that showed the ultimate dedication. You have to have massive willpower and I’m proud to say I did; I wish I’d found that middle ground, if I’m honest. For me it was a matter of, ‘Oh, I’ve finished a fight. Time to go and enjoy myself . . .’ If I’d just done everything in moderation it would have made my job a damn sight easier. It’s not as if Billy, Kerry and Frank didn’t tell me that – plenty of people did.

  It was funny but even then I was turning round and saying to young pros, ‘Don’t be like me, you dickhead. Don’t put all that weight on. It’s the hardest game in the world. Don’t make it even harder on yourself.’ It was a great team effort, though, and being with Billy and Kerry Kayes was the best time of my career. I owe them both so much.

  Joe Hutchinson, a southpaw from Indianapolis, came over in December 2002 and we shared the top of the bill with Joe Calzaghe at Newcastle’s Telewest Arena. Hutchinson had gone the distance with Arturo Gatti – a terrific puncher based in Jersey City, New Jersey – in a really good fight, but I caught him with a body shot that practically took him off his feet. He was on his back, rolling over in pain and for someone who had gone the distance with Gatti it again told me that it was not just about who I was beating, but the way I was doing it. I was doing it more impressively than some of my rivals on the world stage and that was the main thing I could take from some of those fights.

  In January we carried on something of a tradition, when the whole family would go on an annual cruise, all of us, my mum, my dad, my aunties and uncles. They had been three or four times before I got on board because the idea of a cruise had never really floated my boat; I had visions of older people with nothing to do idling around – but they were brilliant, one of the best holidays you could have. We used to go every January.

  In the early days there must have been about eighteen of us in all, local landlords, friends from the pub, along with my family. It was brilliant, and even when the sea was choppy and the weather wasn’t the best you always knew you would have a good laugh. A lot of people are put off by cruises, thinking they’re just two weeks on a boat, but they were the best holidays. We’d go out shopping, sightseeing or whatever by day, get back on the boat at six o’clock where there would be entertainment, a comedian, a nightclub, a cinema, a casino, three or four bars – then you’d go to bed, get up in the morning and you’d be on a new island. You can’t beat them.

  On one cruise we went to New Orleans and me and Matthew went to the Mardi Gras with a few of our pals while some of the older people in our party stayed back on the boat. We went into the city and to all the bars; there was something going on in every bar, people passing weed around, women flopping their tits out, everyone having a good time and before we knew it several hours had passed. I looked at my watch and I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, we’re not going to make the boat.’ We jumped in a taxi and the traffic was chock-a-block. We were about fifteen minutes away; the boat was due to leave in ten, so I phoned my dad, still pissed: ‘Dad, Dad, Dad. Hold the ship. Hold it. We’re on our way.’

  When you’re ready to pull out of a harbour everyone is on the top deck looking out ready to wave at those watching; and there we were, piling out of the taxi and legging it up the gangplank – about six or seven of us – and we could just see my dad on the top deck shaking his head, thinking, ‘Look at these dick-heads, here.’

  A few incidents aside, it was so chilled out; and it was important for me to enjoy the downtime because I knew the fights would get harder and be tougher.

  And they don’t come much harder or tougher than Vince Phillips. A week before the quality and experienced American came over to fight me at my MEN fortress in April 2003, we weren’t sure that he would be fighting. He had some child support problems and Frank settled them so Vince could eventually leave America, but then he had issues with how much he was going to be paid. They kept it from me, it was none of my business, but Vince was going to walk out of the arena on the night of the fight and my agent, Paul Speak, ran after him and shouted, ‘Vince, where are you going?’ He was going back and forth with Frank, while Argentina’s Aldo Rios was in the changing rooms, warming up just in case.

  It was a weird night behind the scenes at the MEN and Vince did eventually make it into the ring.

  He was a good fighter, too – he might have been thirty-nine but he was still respected and clearly the best I had fought at the time. He was a former world champion, a big right-hand puncher and because I was so keen to sink in my left hand to the body I was often getting caught by rights over the top, so he was a dangerous opponent for me in particular. Even though he was getting on in years, he was still highly thought of in America and not only was he the only guy to beat the reigning champion Kostya Tszyu, he had stopped him in ten rounds, having floored him in the seventh. Vince wasn’t seen as a knock-over job and he was very well regarded.

  The MEN was buzzing, the crowds were still growing.

  I started well in the first round. I was having my successes, but he was getting through with his right, which I think scared Frank Warren and Billy Graham to death. His missile-like right hands were whizzing by my head as the fight wore on, with the odd one getting through. I thought I was hurting him but, in the third round, trouble came. He cut me open; Mick Williamson, who had his work cut out that night, would later say it was the worst cut he’d had to deal with in his career at that point – when you think of how many cuts he has treated in several decades in the sport that was some statement. It was a bad ’un. Somehow, Mick, as always, was able to stop the bleeding, but I think it was the first time in the corner I had been able to read signs of stress
on his face. ‘How is it, Mick?’ I asked. ‘Don’t ask me that fucking question. Get on with it. It’s been and gone.’ He always seemed to say, ‘Get on with it.’

  In the fourth round, I was on the ropes and I leapt at Vince with a jab and he hit me with a right uppercut. It was the hardest I’d been hit in my career. I was trying to find the floor with my feet, but it felt like I was stepping through the canvas and falling. My legs had gone limp, but I was somehow still standing. I groggily tried again to find the floor as Vince followed up. He knew he’d hurt me and tried to apply the finishing touches. It was another crisis. I stayed close to him, smothering him, surviving the moment as you’re told to do when you get hurt. If he landed one more shot I would have been in a whole lot more trouble, especially if it was that right hand. He couldn’t though, and, as he tried to finish me, I think he shot his bolt. Somehow I turned the tables and was all over him and he couldn’t find the distance to nail me cleanly. His success might have taken more out of him than it did me.

  By the last thirty or forty seconds of the round I was giving it back to him and I guess that would have sickened Vince. He had been a good champion, he was a very experienced fighter and he’d hurt me, but he couldn’t quite finish me and then all of a sudden this little shit was coming back at him. It was hard in there, for both of us. And as the fight wore on I was getting stronger, I was getting better, my work rate was increasing and I was finding him more with my punches. Near the end, poor Vince was hobbling about as if he was ice-skating. He never looked like being stopped, even when he ate some proper haymakers, and he was able to hear the final bell. Despite having me in such trouble there weren’t many rounds I actually lost, even though I’d had that crisis point in the fourth. The judges scored well in my favour of 120–108, 120–107 and 119–109.

  That was the hardest I had ever been hit and I was ‘gone’, he just couldn’t get that extra one in. It told me everything I needed to know about how tough fighters were going to be at that level – the shots I hit Vince with had knocked out lesser opponents. He was taking them, firing back and it was a real education, showing me exactly how hard the game was going to become.

  My cut needed plastic surgery again. I had to have it reopened because I wasn’t happy with the job they’d done stitching it and it would take some time to heal. Of course, it didn’t get in the way of a good celebration. It all started in the New Inn one Sunday afternoon when I was the WBU champion and someone walked in, one of my friends, with possibly the worst shirt you could ever imagine seeing. Me and my pals have a certain sense of humour: ‘Look at you, you scruffy bastard,’ we said. ‘Winner of the shit shirt competition – by a mile – is you.’

  It grew from there. We decided that after every fight we would do a ‘Shit Shirt’ competition. We would have fifty quid for the first prize, twenty quid for the second, a tenner for the third and we’d get up on the stage and turn it into something of a catwalk. The shirts were vile. They were the most dreadful things you could find from car boot sales, second-hand shops and the markets. They were all colours, too big, too small. Some of them were absolutely horrendous, but the worse they were, the better the competition. It was mad because it grew and grew to the extent that the papers were covering it, not the results but they always knew where I was the day after the fight and the people started coming from all over, London and Birmingham, and they would go to the New Inn knowing I would go there and we’d all be wearing shit shirts for the competition. The car park would be full, the front of the pub was full, the main lounge was packed. There were cockneys, Scousers, Brummies and they’d shout, ‘All right, Ricky, what do you think of my shit shirt?’ It was just done for me and my pals at first but we started to make a day of it as it got so big, with people like Tommy Docherty and Bernard Manning performing stand-up gigs for us. It became a tradition and it went on for years.

  Maybe doing that on your local council estate isn’t how every sportsman would celebrate a world title win, but I liked it and people have never seen me as a ‘head-up-my-own-arse-big-time-Charlie’ character because of it.

  Besides, I was still living at home with my mum and dad. One day, when Sky Sports were coming round to interview me at the family home, I was in my slippers and late getting up and they were due round any minute. I thought I’d just nip out and get some sweets before they came and Ed Robinson, one of their reporters, was pulling up as I was leaving in the car. ‘Here you are, Ed,’ I said, chucking him the keys to the house. ‘Do you want anything from the shop?’

  ‘No, I’m okay, thanks, Ricky,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Let yourself in and pop the kettle on. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  I was the WBU champion and still living in the box room in my mum and dad’s and it was mad, really. But I’ve always been a home bird and I was always so close to my mum and dad. People would say, ‘Ricky is this down-to-earth lad. He is close to his family.’ That’s how it was. We were a really close family unit.

  I was flying after Phillips and lo and behold, my next opponent was the Argentine Aldo Rios, who had been warming up backstage when I fought Phillips. His first journey wasn’t in vain.

  For a while I became extremely frustrated with the way things were going. Everyone saw Rios as a backward step while superfights with big names like Tszyu, Gatti and Floyd Mayweather were always being mentioned. I wanted those big nights. There was Rios, Dennis Holbaek Pedersen and Carlos Wilfredo Vilches in three of my next four fights, and I found my performances started regressing. I understood the purpose of the fights, WBU title bouts at the MEN Arena to build my fanbase, and the way my career was handled at the time was one of the reasons why the following was developing so quickly – the fans became used to seeing me on a regular basis. But I’d made about ten defences and I wanted to kick on, go to America and fight the very best, and my performances kept slipping.

  Sometimes I was having four or five fights a year, which was perfect. When you go up in quality, you can’t do that – partly because you need a rest after hard fights and in part because fights get harder to negotiate – and that was a problem, as I was always at my best when I was kept busy. If I spent too much time sat about I could go stale, but I was busy all of the time as the WBU champion, even if Rios was another hiding-to-nothing job, as he was another lightweight moving up. He was slippery, good defensively and hard to nail cleanly. He was just about clever enough to stick around, and I had started to tell myself I would have to settle for a points decision, but in the end, during the ninth, I got him with a body shot and they pulled him out when his corner retired him.

  After the fight the party started almost straight away, and it would continue until twelve weeks before the next fight. Drinking, holidays – I’d be here, there and everywhere, apart from the gym.

  I next fought a very seasoned Ghanaian, Ben Tackie. He was more along the lines of what I was after in an opponent. He was thirty and I was keen to show another side to my game. He had fought in America and had been in some hard fights, and, rather than add to that list, me and Billy decided we would try and outbox him. Going into it, I felt it would be the toughest fight of my career and my future was pinned on beating him. I’d seen tapes of Tackie and knew he had a great chin. Anyone who goes the distance with Kostya Tszyu in a main event in Las Vegas must do, and I hit him hard in the first two rounds and promptly surrendered to the fact that I might not knock him out. But, if you spend the entire twelve rounds trying to knock someone out, there is a chance they could get you in the end, whether you leave yourself open for a split second or you run out of steam.

  Every time I hit him the shots just bounced off his head. Nothing affected him, even good solid punches. He just kept coming. I landed two good body shots and he gagged a bit, but basically I thought that if I stood there and opted to slug it out with him I would be giving him the only chance he really had.

  So I saw it as an opportunity to go the distance, box him, use my jab, try a few new things, work on combinatio
ns, step to the side against a better calibre of opponent. As the fight went on I showed I could use my boxing brain by hitting him with a couple of shots, grabbing him, smothering him and restricting his work, frustrate him, move off, hit him with a few more combinations. I not only proved that I could stand there and have it out with him, punch with him, but at times that I could outbox him, jab and move and display my boxing ability.

  Against someone like Tackie you can’t just jab and move, though, because eventually he will get to you in twelve rounds. Twelve three-minute rounds of doing nothing but jabbing and moving is a long time, so I had to think in the fight and by round six and seven I wasn’t sure I could keep up what I was doing with another six rounds left. So as he came in I would let the shots go – ‘Bang, bang, bang’ – and then I’d grab him. Now and again I would hit him with those shots and roll out to the side, then again some shots with a one-two at the end and I’d grab him so I could nick a breather here or there.

  I showed more dimensions in that fight than I had done before. Tszyu and I both emphatically outscored him. No matter how much people want you to succeed, and although some people had started to say: ‘He’s our next best chance at a world title’, you still get the critics, and they had been asking, ‘Well, he’s all right, but has he got any boxing ability?’ I’d ticked those boxes against Tackie, now demonstrating I could fight and win with bad cuts, that I could always make the weight, no matter what I started training camp at, and that I was not just a body puncher.

  I nearly boxed Pittsburgh southpaw Paul Spadafora a couple of times but for one reason or another it never came off. I was then due to be matched with Kelson Pinto, unbeaten and a real puncher and it was mentioned that it might be for the WBO title. ‘That’s more like it,’ I thought. ‘That’s what I want.’ He was a dangerous knockout artist. When one journalist told me Pinto was going to fight Junior Witter, before Witter withdrew injured I said, ‘After seeing Pinto’s compilation tape I’ve got a good idea of what he’s ruptured.’ So I got sparring partners in – big, six-foot tall right-hand punchers to mimic Pinto’s style, and then, right at the last minute, they said he wasn’t coming over. He pulled out, injured or whatever.