War and Peace: My Story by Ricky Hatton

Author:Ricky Hatton [Hatton, Ricky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447245513
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2013-10-09T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Mayweather

I first laid eyes on the ‘Pretty Boy’ in 2005 when he fought Arturo Gatti in Atlantic City.

It was only a couple of weeks after I’d beaten Kostya Tszyu, and for a while people had speculated that one day I might face Gatti – a crowd-pleasing puncher who was born in Canada but fought out of New Jersey. So I went to the fight and spent time with Arturo in his hotel beforehand. They were boxing for the WBC light-welterweight belt, and Floyd Mayweather had recently moved up from lightweight. He had won world titles at super-featherweight, lightweight and now, after demolishing Gatti, light-welterweight, killing the idea of me ever fighting Arturo.

Floyd was incredible that night, to be honest; he was something else against Gatti – he just made it look so easy. Gatti was a future Hall of Famer, but Floyd absolutely took him apart with a master-class of spiteful counterpunching. Floyd had something that I had not seen before. It was a mismatch, really, and it looked like Floyd could finish it at any time.

When I beat Tszyu, he was above Mayweather in the pound-for-pound rankings so I thought, ‘Okay, so Gatti was just a plodder. With my work rate, and if Kostya Tszyu couldn’t keep me off, how could Mayweather?’ So it was in my mind that we might fight one day. I knew it was possible. Mayweather called me out after the Gatti battering, saying we should fight at Madison Square Garden, and that I was a dirty fighter.

As a young gun, and having walked through everything Tszyu had given me at the time, nothing frightened me. I just thought, ‘All in good time, mate.’

I did not see Floyd Mayweather again until it came time to publicize our fight, set for 8 December 2007, nearly two years later. We did a five-city press tour through Los Angeles, Grand Rapids in Michigan – his hometown – New York, Manchester and London to publicize the event while filming a mini-series, Hatton Mayweather 24/7, for HBO, a show that documented the build-up to the fight to create intrigue and awareness for the pay-per-view.

In America, Floyd gave me such a drilling everywhere we went – he gave me so much stick. The Los Angeles press conference was at Disneyland. There was a red carpet and it was in the sunshine, and he was slagging me off, saying, ‘Come here, give me some of that face-to-face shit’, wanting to square up with me for the cameras and just talking down at me the whole time. I was simply hitting the usual soundbites, like ‘Yeah, it’ll be a good fight’ and all the rest of it. I tried not to sound bothered, but I came out of all of our meetings thinking, ‘You wanker.’

One night, I was out for a meal in a restaurant in Los Angeles with my dad, Kerry Kayes, Paul Speak and Billy Graham. We were all sat round the table when Floyd comes in and says, ‘Ah, Ricky, you’re having something to eat.

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