Ricky Hatton: The People’s Champion

Ricky Hatton: The People’s Champion

By Garry White

Always back there, moving forward (in the ring at least). Another weekend, with grainy screens, as if the non-existent sun was blemishing it at ten o’clock on a Saturday night. Behind the bar, Fosters, Carling, maybe even a Castlemaine – it made no difference; they all tasted the same. The bar heaving: all French crops, leather jackets, and untucked ‘going out shirts’; the smell of Jupe pungent amid the twin toxins of nicotine and lager. Lads dressed like a million dollars but owning no more than a ripped tenner between them.

At home, a wardrobe doomed to reek of all the excess in the morning, until the next time… and the time after that. Washing a hundred strangers’ smoke out of the thick globules of gel in your hair. The smells taking your hangover back to things that you can’t quite remember from the night before.

Every weekend was the same. The same pubs, the same clubs, maybe even the casino – everything in the same order. Daring at the time, but dully predictable. The patterns repeated without even recognising that they were patterns. Not alone. With others – both mates and complete strangers. All doing the same, seeking the same. Modern. Critical. Vibrant. Like a lyric from that Supergrass song that hit the charts when I was eighteen.

Knowing but totally innocent, you think this unstoppable feeling will cling there forever. But it’s gone before you can properly see it for what it is. Groping, you can’t hang onto it; now it’s so far back over your shoulder that you can barely see it at all. Friends, some gone before their time, locked back there, now in a time that feels as ancient as Philip Larkin’s “August Bank Holiday Lark” – time leaves you behind, those ‘glory days’ passing you by “in the wink of a young girl’s eye,” as Springsteen once lamented. Those tales from once legendary nights out now as redundant as the nightly kebab grease on my then ubiquitous white shirt.

And then there was Ricky Hatton. Less than eighteen months separate us. This was his time, too. Me and hundreds of others in that South Coast boozer; all of us watching him make history. We drank the same beer, ate the same food, and despite never having set foot in Manchester, he was unmistakably one of our own. Those mental nights on the Guinness, the Benidorm jolly-ups, and gut-busting fry-ups – who wouldn’t have loved to have tagged along on a ride, where, despite his fame, you didn’t have to be cool or popular to jump on board?

There, he is up there on the screen. All the bad living sweated out in the gym. Moving forward. All pressure. Orien the hunter, with malice stretched in those sickly-skinned arms. The pub-watching, but only half-watching. By now, we all knew the script. Every one of them proclaiming at some point in fight week, “Let’s watch the Hatton fight.” They went as if attending a wedding of a relative they only vaguely cared about. But it gave their night a centre, a hint of purpose, something to hang onto before a nightclub and disappointment.

The Hitman bearing forward, arms swinging. Something lands! The crowd reacts. The commentator reacts too and invites us in. We all look up from our pints, catching it for an instant as the opponent tucks everything in, and as the storm passes, we return to our lager, banter, and bullshit. Maybe another round of drinks. Change from a tenner. Feed it into the fruity as a dozen eyes bear into you, praying that you don’t win. Back to the fight, and Ricky’s got him now. He pummels away hard to the body. The other fella can’t handle the storm. He goes down. The pub erupts, but it’s more forced than an England World Cup goal. By the time they strap the WBU belt to his waist, the pub has half-emptied, still eager to grab the cheap entry to the clubs.

They love Ricky, but they don’t care about the details. Not the merits of the WBU strap or those of the fella vanquished in the other corner. Maybe that’s the true marker of fame. It was all about Hatton: his persona, charisma, and the heart that was two sizes too big. He was the sun that our Saturday night orbited around.

Yes, the Hatton with the broken smile beaming out from inside the back pages of the Daily Mirror, next to Macca’s Acca and Newsboy’s predictions for the cards at Wincanton and Fakenham. Dressed in a flat cap, sheepskin overcoat, and Del Boy’s yellow three-wheeled van behind him. With the win safely in his pocket, you’d see him back on the sauce again [HP and Guinness] in Monday’s edition, surrounded by what looked like the cast of Shameless. His people. No bombast or bullshit. The beer-fuelled everyman antidote to all of Prince Naz’s gold-throned excess. The people’s champion without a ‘proper’ belt.

But when he beat Kostya Tszyu, there was no denying it any longer. He proved the Hitman was ‘The Man’. That night was different. There were no half-measures. No distractions. No one eye on the fruit machine or the barmaid. Every eye in the place on every punch. The sense of relief at the end, palpable. The thought of him not getting one of the ‘proper’ belts was simply too much to countenance. But secretly, we all knew that Ricky wouldn’t let us down.

‘Blue Moon, I saw you standing alone…’

The Marcels meets Manchester. Back when the team in light blue were crap. Those ring entrances were both raucous and haunting. But now, Christ, the lyrics want to make you weep. For a time and a place that will never come again. Twenty years down the track, but it may as well be a hundred. And if their memory is enough to haunt me, to feel the tears gathering behind my eyes, then how must it have felt for Ricky? To remember that time, when he was the lineal champ and the undisputed King of all our worlds.

Thirty thousand people followed him to Vegas like he was the Pied Piper. Just imagine that for a moment. This was the Hatton that mattered outside of the BoxRec stats. He didn’t win, but he still left with something that Floyd Mayweather could never hope to possess. They still loved him when he wasn’t winning.

Later desperation and agony. Long shadows and nightmares. The tabloids that once pretended to love him, twisting the knife with public shame.

Hatton!! Hatton!! You can still hear the chants reverberating on YouTube and deep in your memory. At the end, I hope ‘The Hitman’ could still hear them too. The good times, the adulation from a million strangers; always a blessing and never a curse.