Don't Do It Ricky: A Plea
Ricky Hatton's proposed comeback is the same old story of a fighter not knowing what to do with themselves without the sport to guide them.
Boxing fans love a comeback. Understandable reason when you think about the nature of the sport… Each generation laments the current landscape as the worst ever, predicts the sport’s inevitable demise and talks about the good old days, always preferring to look backwards rather than forwards. On those occasions when one of the names from yesteryear decide to come and mix it up with the current crop, it captures the imagination in ways few match ups can.
When they are right, they are truly memorable. Think Tyson’s first fight when he got out the joint, destroying Peter McNeeley, a 38-1 fighter, in the first round. Or Vitali Klitschko coming back after four years out of boxing to beat Samuel Peter and set up another run of victories. Sugar Ray Leonard’s bout against “Marvellous” Marvin Hagler in 1987 was both the upset and the fight of the year. And even though it was a complete sham it is still one of boxing’s greatest stories when George Foreman came out of a decade long retirement to beat Steve Zouski and take a world title, the perfect platform on which to sell his lean, mean grilling machines.
Then there’s the truly horrifying. Evander Holyfield’s ongoing career has left him a lisping, stumbling shadow of his former self. Sugar Ray Leonard’s second comeback, just three years after showing the world that the old dog could still learn new tricks, was a wretched end to a glorious career. Tyson’s awful bout with Lennox Lewis may have filled seats and sold pay-per-view but what we saw was a man in need of psychological treatment get mauled by a far superior athlete. The worst boxing atrocity remains the 1980 fight between Larry Holmes and the greatest of all time Muhammad Ali, who was at the time showing the early symptoms of the Parkinsons Disease that would ravage his body.
Now, I’m not saying that Ricky Hatton’s proposed comeback would be as disastrous as any of those. However, as a fan of the man who at one point was a fantastic British champion, I just don’t want to see him step into the ring again for any reason. It should have ended that night against Mayweather, where he was given a boxing lesson, but we all could conclude that there was no shame in losing to the best and to earn plaudits from a competitor of spectacular arrogance while doing so.
His career at that point would have been 43-1, the sort of record that will always keep you in those debates about “greatest of all time” that sports writers and fans alike love so much. The record of course can’t be taken away, but defeats can chip away at its shine and if those last few memories of him is that of a fool, it invariable hurts the legacy. And there are suggestions to say that this might well be the case, even if he ends up fighting a little more than competent opponent.
Signs of it were there in his post-Mayweather victory over Juan Lazcano, where he limped over the finish line by going the distance and was rocked by several punches from a fighter whose career would never have seen him talked about in the same breath as fighters like Hatton were it not for the fact they faced one another. Were it not for an untied shoelace, so say the boxing conspiracy theorists, that fight could have been different. He then laboured to a win against Paulie Malignaggi before being taught a now familiar lesson against Manny Pacquiao.
The real question is, having fought the two greats left in the division and lost to both of them, what is left to prove? It is inconceivable that he could come back and make an impact befitting a man that put the Light Welterweight division on the map. It seems that this comeback isn’t motivated by the recognition he still as something to offer the sport but rather it is a need on the part of the fighter to simply get out their one last time, to placate the inner-narcissist present in all fighters. Even the General Secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control used language more befitting of the Charge of the Light Brigade when clearing the fighter to compete when he said “He spoke well, looks fit and he wants to have one more hurrah.” He already had one last hurrah. Twice.
Few boxers ever handle life away from the limelight well and many are faced with problems when retirement looms. After all the sacrifices made, the relationships strained, the reward of a book deal and a few public appearances doesn’t seem worth it. It’s often said that these comebacks are done for the money, which is sometimes a factor. Mostly though it’s the chance to hear the crowds chant your name before that descent into middle aged mediocrity.
Hatton such problems just two years ago. Turning to drink and drugs in the absence of the sport following his manhandling by Manny Pacquiao, he was deemed to be “extremely ill” by his legal team priot to a stint in rehab. Since coming out it seems most of the demons have been beaten. His physical health has returned, the bloating associated with the excess has left him and his family couldn’t be happier with the results. It seems though that there is one addiction he’s not ever going to get a handle on and that is his addiction to boxing.
Not that he ever really treated the sport with genuine reverence anyway. If that were the case he’d have made a few more sacrifices along the way. Ballooning in weight between fights by as much as forty pounds over fighting weight, insisting on a fry-up the day of a fight, the refusal to turn down social boozing… These trappings all point to a lack of discipline, someone that doesn’t understand the toll that it takes on the body and one who refuses to make the most of his – in his prime = considerable talents.
Of course a younger man could bounce back from these lapses and snap back into shape like a Sretch Armstrong doll. A man of 33 with two years out of the game isn’t likely to find it as easy. There is something depressingly familiar about the claims that “he is in the best shape of his life” the sort of typical glib statement that equates weight loss to having everything else in place. They said that about Paul Gascoigne when he made his return from his ill-fated stint in China. As a statement it is not a measure of wellness or aptitude.
It’s understandable why so many boxing fans would want to see Ricky in the ring again. He was always on the same level as his fans, an archetypal working class hero that never forgot his roots and even at his lowest ebb was recognisably tragic rather than decadent and depraved. Never articulate but undoubtedly charismatic, Hatton could laugh at himself and would take the criticism from the sporting press with an easy humour and good grace. And no matter what discussions spring up about what he could have been had he only tweaked or refined but a few elements he still represents the best of British boxing.
Boxing isn’t something you can dip in and out of at your leisure. When a fighter is unprepared or ill-equipped he gets hurt, beaten and bruised at best, but we all know it can play out far worse.
So please, stick him at ring side, stick him in the celebrity big brother house, stick him anywhere but back in the ring. If he loses it serves no-one, if he wins… That might even be worse, if he acquires a taste for it again, hurtling towards that inevitable moment when it all comes crashing down around him at the hands of a better man, a bigger name on a bigger stage.
When it inevitably happens the masses will cheer once more yet the best thing that could happen for him would be to learn to live with the silence.