War and Peace

by Ricky Hatton

  But from there on in – from that second round – it was as if he was in survival mode. I don’t think he ever recovered. His sole purpose became fiddling and farting his way through to the end, and he must have realized I was not a bad boxer either, not just a brawler. I was as strong as an ox and he couldn’t keep me away. So I kept the pressure on and there were a few changes under Floyd Sr, a few more jabs, although generally it was the same me. It was the old me.

  I don’t blame Paulie for holding as much as he did as the fight wore on, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have made it to the eleventh round like he did. By the time Paulie’s trainer, Buddy McGirt, called it off, he’d warned Paulie, ‘If you don’t throw any punches I’m not going to see you take any more punishment.’ I know Paulie is a proud man and didn’t want it stopped, but by the end he was not throwing anything, he was just holding and holding and holding. It was quite frustrating for me. That is what happens when you go into survival mode, but when someone who is so strong is charging at you it had to be difficult for him, and I think he knew early on it wasn’t going to be his night.

  Having seen Floyd Sr in Vegas for the first time a few months earlier I knew he would be able to give me a hundred per cent and I was right to have that belief when you look at the Malignaggi performance. Paulie was a quality fighter and became a two-weight world champion, but it turned out to be a bit of a mismatch – it was possibly my best display since the Tszyu fight.

  Floyd took many of the plaudits and a lot of it was down to him. I could have gone with any trainer and they could have revitalized my career to a certain extent, because you get that new, fresh injection, new impetus and you’re learning new things and have new people around you. I felt like I had a new lease of life.

  When the Malignaggi fight finished, we went to Mexico City to spend time with Oasis and to watch them live. I was on top of the world, back to my best after Malignaggi, with Liam and Noel carrying my belts and then flying out to Mexico. At the concert there were about 40,000 Mexicans; it was unbelievable, and we were in the dressing rooms with the band. Liam was warming up, Noel was warming up on his guitar and they said, ‘Come on, let’s take you to your seats.’ They walked us to the stage and I didn’t believe what I was seeing. ‘Where’s our seats?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re these.’

  Just behind the curtain, out of sight but on the stage, were our seats, a table and four coolers filled with ice, lagers, beers, vodka and Guinness. ‘Jesus Christ.’ My mates were so happy they were almost in tears.

  Then, during the concert, Liam and Noel said, ‘Give it up for Ricky Hatton,’ and the Mexicans cheered. What a weekend.

  I did miss Billy, though. He was the best trainer I ever worked with, and if I could have stayed with him I would have done; I was hurt that he had started court proceedings against me, whoever was right. I heard later that he went to Vegas for the Malignaggi contest, although he was not actually at the fight. He just sat in the bar drinking. He was hurting, so was I. In many ways he and Floyd Sr were similar as people. As trainers though, their methods were chalk and cheese. Floyd did pads, catching, slipping and rolling shots. Billy did the belt and weight training. Floyd did no weight training. They were at opposite ends of the training scale. When I first met Billy, before either of us had anything, we didn’t give a shite about money, it was all about the boxing. When the purses got bigger, and 24/7 came along, Floyd loved the camera and I think Billy loved it as well. They both had massive personalities and, just as Billy always thought he was the best, Floyd thought he was the best. It was uncanny. They were very alike in some respects – and the decision to hire Floyd Sr raised eyebrows – but they were more different as trainers than people.

  My ego had been boosted by the Malignaggi fight. It had needed to be, too, because there was a whirlwind from the Philippines called Manny Pacquiao, who had been moving up through the weights and who had his eye on my spot as the world’s number one light-welterweight.

  CHAPTER 10

  Pacquiao

  I climbed off the canvas and sat on the edge of the ring. Unsurprisingly, because I had been knocked down, sparring had been stopped. I pulled a towel over my head and cried and cried; I knew Manny Pacquiao was going to beat me, and we were two weeks away from the fight. ‘Come on, Rick,’ Dad said, trying to comfort me. ‘Leave me alone,’ I wept. ‘Just go away.’

  A month before the fight, I had good sparring partners and I was knocking the shit out of them. I was on it; two weeks later they were beating me up. I got dropped by a super-featherweight, Cornelius Lock, who knocked me on my arse.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop sparring,’ shouted Floyd Mayweather Sr. ‘That’s it for today.’

  ‘The penny’s finally dropped has it, you dickhead,’ I thought. I sat on the ring steps, fuming, put the towel over my head and got lost in my thoughts. No way was I winning this fight. I was sobbing.

  ‘Are you all right, son?’ Dad asked again.

  My dad doesn’t know boxing. But it doesn’t take anyone to know boxing to be able to tell where I was. Matthew could see it, Paul Speak could see it, Dad could see it; Mickey Cantwell, a former flyweight champion, who has been a friend of the family for years, could see it. It was a very important fight, and Dad knew how confident I had been earlier in camp and knew how hard it was for me to come to terms with the Mayweather defeat and how I struggled to do so. I think everyone was proud of how I came back from that defeat, and you’d have to be a very, very hard man not to feel some emotion at seeing me that day.

  ‘Just leave me, Dad,’ I cried. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’ The fight was just days away.

  It wasn’t a horrendous knockdown, but Lock knocked me down nonetheless, and he was three weight divisions below me. Previously I had been sparring with Cornelius and had been red hot. But as the fight drew nearer sparring was getting worse and worse. The big Cuban southpaw Erislandy Lara had started having his way with me, too.

  People were in my ear, ‘Ricky, Floyd’s trained you into the ground, this fucker. He’s killing you. There’s nothing left. You’re running up Mount Charleston with those big boots on. You need to have a few days off.’ In other camps I would do some longer runs, about eight miles over hills, through fields, down dips – Jesus Christ, they were hard. But we would do four like that in a training camp. With Floyd it was two a week up Mount Charleston, and people were saying they could see, bit by bit, the life was draining out of me. Floyd had me running in big boots – and Matthew, who was fighting on the under-card, was too. In the end, Matthew went, ‘Fuck them, I’m not running in those. They’re fucking killing me.’ Matthew knocked the boots on the head. I wish I’d done that, but me being me I said nothing and got on with it.

  Floyd might have suffered from sarcoidosis, the illness that killed comedian Bernie Mac, but he was always in great shape and in great physical condition. His lungs were struggling and he was coughing and spluttering, but we always got the work out and the padwork was top quality – it was just for me there was too much of it. Clearly it had worked with other fighters but with me I felt it had a negative effect. With all of the experience I’d gathered over the years and how I knew my body. I should have said, ‘Floyd, I’m not doing this.’

  ‘I know I’m right. I’m the best,’ he used to say. I should have said, ‘I don’t give a shit if you’re the best. I know my body. My body is telling me I’m fucked and if I don’t have a rest this fucker is going to kill me.’ I could and should have done that a couple of weeks earlier but I didn’t. I don’t blame Floyd. I went through with it, more and more training, and by the time my sparring partner knocked me down it was too late. There was no going back. I had three days off, had a decent last spar, but I couldn’t turn it around.

  That final session gave me some confidence back, if only a little. It was a good spar; HBO were filming it for 24/7, and I dropped my sparring partner. I’d desperately needed to have a good one. If I’d had another shit spar I might as well have pulled out –
but I would never have done that because all of the fans who had booked their flights and tickets, coming over in their thousands once more. It was just so important to my mental state that I had a good spar before the fight: ‘Jesus Christ. Look what I did after having three days off. What could I have done if three weeks earlier I had a week off ?’ I could have got it back. There’s not much you can do three days before the fight.

  But it had started badly months before. We had done a month of training in Manchester and that was going to be followed by a month in Vegas, so I had eight weeks with Floyd, and in our first session for Pacquiao he got in the ring in Manchester, put the pads on and I got ready. I punched my gloves together, looked up and said, ‘Hang on, Floyd, we’re fighting a southpaw.’

  ‘Erm,’ he said, ‘no, no, no. We will do pads orthodox, we will spar southpaw.’

  Stupidly, I went, ‘All right, Floyd. No problem. You’re the boss.’ My brother, Paul Speak, my dad, all said, ‘Fucking hell. He can’t do southpaw pads? You’re fighting a southpaw.’ But I don’t like confrontation so I went with it, like I do.

  Your pads are your biggest preparation for your sparring, and your sparring is your biggest preparation for the fight. So I did orthodox pads and when my sparring partners came it was ridiculous. I had never liked southpaws at the best of times. These were not, however, the best of times.

  Manny Pacquiao was the most popular fighter in world boxing. He was on an incredible streak that had seen him end the career of Oscar De La Hoya up at welterweight, and in his previous bouts he had won title fights with Juan Manuel Márquez and David Díaz, at super-featherweight and lightweight respectively, as he tore through the weight classes.

  At light-welterweight, though, I was still king. I had never lost at the weight and the convincing manner of the victory over Malignaggi solidified my position as the number one in the division, re-establishing myself after the Mayweather loss. I had been looking forward to the Pacquiao fight, I was so confident I was going to win. Floyd Sr had taken a lot of the credit for revitalizing my career because of the Malignaggi fight. Where I had been aggressive before – like a bulldozer – we worked on improving my hand speed, combinations, footwork and defence, and it worked a treat.

  The camp for Malignaggi had been just about spot on, but in the last week of sparring I started to feel a bit weary, but then I got away with it; the last four weeks of this, though, were the straws that broke the camel’s back; they did me in. Floyd is a good coach and a lot of his methods I use with the fighters I train now. But it’s not just about work, work, work, and that’s what Floyd was. There was only one gear. There was no, ‘You’re looking a bit flat today, Ricky, have a day off and come back on Friday.’ Instead, after eight rounds of sparring, he’d say, ‘You look a bit tired today, Rick. We’ll do ten tomorrow.’ Fucking do me a favour – if I was looking jaded or tired, why would I do even more? I will never understand thinking like that, nor will I ever be able to understand why I didn’t just say ‘No’ to him. I blame myself for not telling him I needed a rest.

  Some thought my power and size at light-welterweight was going to be too much for Pacquiao, who’d started his pro career as a flyweight – I know I did. They said that Pacquiao had only defeated Oscar because the Golden Boy was drained having to get down to the 145lbs catchweight agreement rather than the 147lbs division limit, but as we did the press tour I was taking nothing for granted. Besides, I was the underdog with the bookmakers.

  ‘This fat, beer-drinking Englishman is going to shock the world again,’ I told the press.

  Me and Manny met the media at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, before returning to the New Inn, where Manny and I played a game of darts, then we went to the Imperial War Museum in London before stops in New York and Los Angeles. Pacquiao seemed all right to me; I didn’t get to know him and I still don’t know him, but he was a nice little fella. Obviously he was loved in the Philippines. He was a good fighter and a nice guy, but he was not Mr Personality.

  HBO ran another 24/7 series based around the fight, the build-up and our camps, but when Floyd Jr and I did it our series got a TV Grammy award in America. We were just so different, the two of us, because it was me from the council estate and Floyd with all his bling – we were total opposites and the perfect combination. Mayweather, at the press conference was like, ‘Look at me. I’ve got 250,000 on the wrist, 150 on the pinkie, 150 here.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but you’re a dickhead.’ It just worked. Talk about opposites. While I had no strong feelings towards Pacquiao one way or the other, I still thought Floyd was a dickhead. I couldn’t stand him. I really couldn’t. I thought he was an arsehole.

  I was also starting to form my own opinions about his father pretty swiftly.

  We had to stay in a different house when we arrived in Vegas, as the place we’d used for the Castillo, Mayweather and Malignaggi fights was being used – but that wasn’t a problem. The team would all meet up to watch HBO’s latest 24/7 episode each week and Floyd Mayweather Sr’s timekeeping was poor – it was pissing me off. He was terrible, terrible. I’d be in the gym for an hour and a half waiting for the fucker, bandaged up and sitting around. Then, when we watched 24/7, while I was waiting for him in the gym, he was at the drive-thru having food, Taco Bell or whatever it was. I thought, ‘What a fucking dickhead – there’s me in the gym, waiting for him.’ I couldn’t believe it.

  Meanwhile, they showed Pacquiao tearing through his sparring partners like a hot knife through butter, and Manny’s trainer, Freddie Roach, was closing his gym for three hours a day so he could focus solely on Pacquiao.

  Floyd Sr just wasn’t the same for that camp as he was for Malignaggi. The fight with Paulie wasn’t as high profile but I think when the TV came in for the Pacquiao publicity, Floyd Sr warmed to it. The 24/7 guys were asking me to do all sorts – go for a walk on The Strip, go to karaoke bars because they’d heard I liked them, but I said, ‘No, I’m training. I don’t want to do all that stuff.’ There was, though, a man waiting in the wings who would do everything: Floyd. I don’t know whether he thought he was the star of the show or what.

  For me, it was just a bad, bad training camp. As a fight nears, you get that bit meaner and nastier. I wasn’t. I was struggling and, for someone who suffers with depression, it didn’t take much for even the smallest things to play on my mind. One of the oldest sayings in boxing is ‘Don’t leave it in the gym.’ I was there working my arse off and there was Floyd with his poems and his rhymes, ‘The best, the rest, nothing to confess, better than all the rest. Better than Freddie joke coach Roach. That’s me.’ He was calling Pacquiao’s esteemed trainer, Freddie Roach, the ‘joke coach Roach’ in the build-up, but I thought, ‘Well, he’s not a joke coach, is he? Far from it.’ How is he a joke coach – Freddie’s a Hall of Fame trainer who’s worked with more than twenty world champions. He also belittled Billy in front of the camera; it made me a bit uncomfortable but don’t forget Billy was suing me at the time, claiming I hadn’t paid him. It wasn’t at all nice.

  Vegas was under siege from the Brits once more, but anyone who goes into a fight thinking he just needs to get lucky with one shot to win is in trouble. I’ve always been a little bit reckless and that was my outlook: ‘I just want to get one body shot in . . . just one shot . . . This little fart is not as big as me, he’s not as strong as me, if I can get one little dig in, it will all be over.’

  The only news that really buoyed me that week was that an old friend of mine could be ringside. Back when we left Billy’s gym in Salford, and I was boxing at Mottram & Hattersley Amateur Boxing Club, I met a young boy called James Bowes. Steve Alford was a pal of mine at the time and he ran the club on the estate, so with us not having any premises he said we could share the gym for a bit.

  There was a little lad who came in, and he used to watch the boxing with his mum, Julie. ‘Can James come in and watch the boxing?’ she’d ask. I’d say, ‘Yeah, of course. No problem.’ He’d come in every day and sit there,
dead excited, watching us. Then some days he was there and others he wasn’t. Some days he would come in with bandages on his head and I asked his mum what his story was.

  James had a rare illness, hydrocephalus, where some of the tubes in his head were blocked up so the fluid wouldn’t disperse properly. It created pressure inside the skull so he’d have blackouts, big boils would come out on his head and he would end up collapsing. ‘They’ve not put a time limit on it,’ she said, ‘but he’s not going to have the life we’re going to have.’

  It was terrible. I started getting a bit closer to him, speaking to him every time I saw him. ‘Hiya, James. Are you all right?’ When I challenged Tony Pep for the WBU title I asked James to carry my British title belt into the ring and he stood there crying and said he’d love to – he was absolutely made up. I almost welled up at his reaction. The day after the fight he phoned me and said, ‘Ricky, everybody saw me on TV. They’re asking for my autograph.’ He loved it.

  For someone who has all of the worries in the world, who’s on a short time span, to come in and say I inspired him just took my breath away. Every time he did an interview I had to choke the tears back. ‘I’m your inspiration? With all the trouble you’ve got and you’re happy-go-lucky without a care in the world,’ I wondered. Over the years we’ve been out and about quite a few times. We’ve been to Lapland and once we went to Blackpool, to the Pleasure Beach – I’m terrible for scary rides, I hate roller coasters but he loves them. He dragged me on every one. I felt like I’d fought Mayweather by the end.

  Then his mother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in 2002. Everyone had been so worried about James, but it was his mum, Julie, a picture of health, who got an unexpected illness and died. I wondered how much more James would have to go through. I’d had a few fights in America where, because of his condition, he wasn’t allowed to travel. Then, all of a sudden, by some miracle, one of the tubes in his head reopened and he started to enjoy a better quality of life and health. By the time the Pacquiao fight came along he was able to fly. It was brilliant. So I flew him over, put him up in a nice hotel, met him at the airport and he was loving it in Las Vegas.