Ricky Hatton, who has died aged 46, was one of the most popular of British boxers, with a cheeky-chappy, hard-drinking persona that helped him build a vast army of fans. He would refer to himself as a “Manc scally”, and thousands of his supporters believed he was not just a fighter but also their pal.
Perhaps his finest hour as a fighter came in 2005 when, as World Boxing Union (WBU) light welterweight champion, he was matched with the International Boxing Federation title holder, the Russian Kostya Tszyu, an outstanding and skilful boxer. The fight was staged in the early hours of the morning to suit the demands of American television.
Hatton, urged on by a sell-out crowd of more than 20,000 at the Manchester Arena, was at his rampaging best. Tszyu retired on his stool after 11 rounds of torrid combat, and Hatton had achieved his dream of being what the sport would regard as a genuine world champion.
Born in Stockport, Ricky grew up on the Hattersley council estate in Hyde, Greater Manchester. His mother, Carol, and father, Ray, ran a pub and also had a carpet business, in which Ricky briefly worked after leaving school before embarking on a professional boxing career as soon as he could, at the age of 18.
Despite having built a useful amateur record after first going to a boxing gym as a 10-year-old, Hatton had become disillusioned with the unpaid sport, believing that his high-pressure bodypunching style, reminiscent of many leading Hispanic fighters, was not adequately rewarded by judges in the amateur game. He was particularly disgusted by a scoring controversy at the world junior championships when he was 17.
He signed a long-term professional deal with the promoter Frank Warren, trained with Billy “the Preacher” Graham and began to rack up a series of impressive wins, often on the undercard of Warren’s shows with headline stars such as Naseem Hamed and Chris Eubank. In 1999 he was named as the British Boxing Writers’ Club’s young boxer of the year, and was on his way to stardom.
Called “the Hitman” in deference to the great American champion Thomas Hearns, Hatton remembered he had been given the nickname as a boy by his first coach, who had said: “Look at him, how evil he is, he’s a little Hitman.”
Despite being prone to facial injuries, and already ballooning in weight between contests through marathon drinking sessions, the young Hatton was able to counter accepted beliefs of fitness conditioning with weeks of training that would see him lose as much as three stone in weight to make the 10st light welterweight limit.
After he became the British champion in 2000, prevailing in a gory battle with Jon Thaxton, Warren masterminded Hatton’s rise, using the lightly regarded WBU title to draw fans to his promotions. Hatton won the vacant belt in 2001 by beating the Canadian Tony Pep and defended it 15 times, often at the MEN Arena in Manchester.
Hatton was a huge Manchester City fan, and his spectacular ring walks, to the strains of the City anthem Blue Moon, created a party atmosphere in which his supporters – many of them City fans as much as Hatton supporters – were delirious participants.
Following his world title victory against Tszyu there was an acrimonious split with Warren, after which Hatton set about building his fame in the US. Thousands of fans followed him across the Atlantic to see him reel off three victories before he was matched against the world’s No 1 welterweight, World Boxing Council champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Estimates of the number of supporters who followed Hatton to Las Vegas in December 2007 ranged from 25,000 to 50,000, with the strip reverberating to beery renditions of their favourite refrain: “There’s only one Ricky Hatton, one Ricky Hatton / Walking along, singing a song, singing in a Hatton Wonderland”.
However, their support could not make up for a gulf in class, with Hatton suffering his first professional defeat as he was outboxed and stopped in 10 rounds.
By then Hatton’s out-of-the-ring excesses were taking a toll that would shorten his career. His next superfight in Vegas, against the Filipino Manny Pacquiao in 2009, ended with a brutal defeat. Hatton, grey and gaunt from crash dieting to make light welterweight, was knocked out in the second round.
For a while Hatton tried to become a boxing promoter, with not much conspicuous success, and was rumoured to have gone through a sizeable portion of the millions he had earned in the ring. The Pacquiao defeat, in which Hatton felt he had let down the thousands who followed him to the US, hit him hard, and it was then that drug-taking and depression began to take a serious hold on him for the first time.
He was known to be a heavy drinker throughout his career, and later admitted to cocaine use. In a bleak autobiography, The Hitman (2006), he recounted suffering from depression and wrote of having seriously contemplated taking his own life.
At one stage he fell out badly with his father, who had acted as his manager. The issue, never fully explained, was over money, and the two did not speak for years. He was also at loggerheads with his mother, as well as his brother, Matthew, who like Ricky boxed professionally, and became European welterweight champion.
In addition he had a tempestuous relationship with his girlfriend Jennifer Dooley, the mother of his two daughters, Millie and Fearne; he also had a son, Campbell, from an earlier relationship.
One last attempt to return to boxing, in 2012, ended his career for good as he was knocked out in the ninth round on a sad night in his old Manchester fortress, the MEN Arena, by the Ukrainian Vyacheslav Senchenko. The fans who turned up to see their champion saw only a hollow shell of the fighter Hatton had once been, with reactions and punch resistance letting him down. In July 2025 he announced that he hoped to fight Eisa Al Dah of the United Arab Emirates in a middleweight bout of eight rounds in Dubai in December.
In January last year he appeared on the ITV show Dancing on Ice. He remained in demand as an after-dinner speaker, something at which he displayed some flair through his natural sense of humour, with an act leaning heavily on that of an old friend and admirer, the Manchester comedian Bernard Manning.
As a fighter, Hatton had a style that pleased. He always gave everything in pursuit of victory, and those who witnessed the pinnacle of his career in 2005 will forever have their “I was there” moment. He was appointed MBE in 2007.
He is survived by his three children and a granddaughter.
