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CARVILL’S NOTES: The Return of ‘Hitman’ Ricky Hatton
It would seem quite pious to focus on the numbers, but there is no getting around that they are there: 46 years old, a record of 45-3 (32), that TKO in ten, that KO in two.
If one was not looking at the numbers, one might also look for dates. No, not the 2 December, for when the fight is set to go ahead, but another: 1 April.
Because surely it is a joke that Ricky Hatton, now much closer to 50 than he is to 30 and a grandfather, is once more about to step into the ring again.
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It may be pious, but there is an element of common sense in here: what is Ricky Hatton gaining from this? What are any of us gaining from this?
The fight is to take place in a few months, at 160lbs (a weight that Hatton has only ever fought at in an exhibition), and it is to be against Eisa Al Dah, who nobody has ever heard of and carries a light record of 8-3 (4).
There was a bet made here at Castle Independent in the last few days (okay, it was me) that the fight does not go ahead. It seems as far into uncertainty as Tyson Fury’s recent pronouncement that he will face Oleksandr Usyk against at Wembley Stadium nine months from now.
In fact, it smacks of little more than a publicity stunt. I suspect that Al Dah has set the fight up, is bankrolling the fight, will fight the fight himself, and then lose. I suspect that it is little more than a vanity project for Al Dah, put out on a streaming service that no one has heard of now or will again.
So shame on him. Shame on all of us, really.
People will remember Hatton at his peak, when he filled the cauldron that made up the MEN Arena (it is still, to so many, still the MEN, because Hatton was pure Manchester, so his home venue should still be the Manchester Evening News Arena). But what they will not remember – or which they will remember that they need to forget – is much more than the losses (three of them in his last five fights); the battles with weight, drugs, and alcohol; or of how he struggled with Luis Collazo in the first fight of his British Invasion, in Boston, in 2007; or of the bruising, tiring encounter with Juan Lazcano in Manchester, six months after Hatton was stopped by Floyd Mayweather.
Hindsight is always 20-20, but through a 2025 lens, that fight against Lazcano at the City of Manchester Stadium would have been the perfect chance for Hatton to retire: 55,000 fans at home, walking out for the last time with Billy Graham, able to leave the sport of boxing still relatively young and intact.
He stayed around too long. He beat Lazcano, then he beat Malignaggi, but then he went up against Manny Pacquiao, and Pacquiao starched him in two, Hatton gulping for air. Then he went away for three years, which is when the drink and the drugs began to take hold, and then suddenly he was back against Senchenko. And some managed to convince themselves, despite the evidence of their own eyes, that the good times were coming back again.
They were not, though. Hatton was stopped and dropped in nine, the bodypuncher taken out by a punch to the body. The famed Mancunian who loved his city and its people, dropped in front of them. The man with ‘PRIDE IN BATTLE’ tattooed on his back, on his knees on the floor, something inside him so broken.
There will be those who say that a just world would not have men in their fifth decades fighting each other (Al Dah is also 46). But a just world would require no men to fight each other for the entertainment of others. We cheered on Hatton when he was young and taking damage, but we are hypocritical enough to show the other side of our faces when he is old and taking damage.
As I said - shame on all of us, really.
And on that note:
- On 19 July, Manny Pacquiao will face Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight title in Las Vegas. There is plenty of precedent for a former champion coming out of retirement at an age that gives many pause. Pacquiao is 46 and, as an adult, free to make whatever decisions he wants to. But even to the casual fan, it is obvious that the Pacquiao of 2025 will be a diminished version of what we were graced with around 2009. Most will remember the limp end of Pacquiao’s career, with that final loss to Yordenis Ugas. So it is with some surprise that Pacquiao will be fighting for a ‘world championship’. The reason, it seems, lies with the WBC: any returning former champion can ask for an immediate title shot. But is there a statute of limitations on these things? By that reasoning, the 57-year-old Riddick Bowe could ask for a shot against Oleksandr Usyk. As could Vitali Klitschko, aged 53, or Lennox Lewis, aged 59.
- I have, so far in my 43 years, broken my nose twice. Or, more accurately, other people have twice broken it for me. A shame, as I used to be considered something of a beauty. The achievement in this was that in neither case did these occurrences happen within a boxing ring. The first time was at a nightclub in North Yorkshire when a patron, upon being ejected from the premises, swung her arms backwards and the tip of her elbow collided with my face. The second was in the gym, but outside of the ring, when I was demonstrating on the pads how someone should jab. Something fell in the corner of the gym and both of us turned as the punch was being thrown. Neither of us were following the trajectory of that punch, which also cracked my nose. I have not boxed or sparred in a long time and will most likely never do so again. Therefore, it seems that my nose has managed, on a technicality, to retire undefeated from the ring.
- Last week saw news break that Julio Cesar Chavez Jr had been detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, with a view to his deportation back to Mexico. Chavez, it seems, has been detained on both weapons charges and irregularities in his visa application. Chavez’s arrest came less than a week after he had lost to Jake Paul in Anaheim, California, in a match watched by thousands in the flesh and millions around the world. One has to wonder if the officers at ICE and their superiors are boxing fans and, if so, were just waiting to see the result of the fight first.
Senior writer/editor Pete Carvill is the author of Death of a Boxer (a Daily Mail and Irish Times ‘Sports Book of the Year’) and A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War. He is also a frequent blow-by-blow commentator on DAZN for boxing from Germany.
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