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RUTHLESS DEDICATION (from 2003)
part one
When the great Manchester light-welterweight Ricky 'The Hitman' Hatton steps into the ring he knows that if he doesn't knock his opponent out, he can wear him out instead.
Hatton, 24, is probably Britain's fittest boxer. Each minute of each round is thunderous, full-on brutality: if his punches don't get you, exhaustion will. "I don't think there's a fighter in Britain who can match my work rate," he says.
To be so ruthless in the ring requires dedication out of it.
Hatton's preparations must ensure he has enough fuel to sustain his extraordinary work rate throughout the championship distance of 12 three-minute rounds. A perfect career record of 32 wins from 32 fights, 25 of which were achieved inside the distance, suggests he's doing something right.
Hatton's love of an old-fashioned tear-up has drawn comparisons with some of the great champions of the past. But while his style is old school, his training certainly isn't.
He recently moved gyms to work with sports scientist and former British bodybuilding champion Kerry Kayes on improving his strength and nutrition and says that in his last fight, in which he defeated American Vince Phillips in probably his finest performance so far, he 'felt fitter than any of the last 31'.
Boxing is, after all, known as the sweet science and when you're facing against some of the meanest mothers to spit in a bucket, in the biggest pay days of your life, it isn't advisable to leave anything to chance.
Ironically, Hatton's extraordinary fitness almost cost him his professional career. As a child he was already hyperactive. At nine he was kickboxing; two years later he began boxing. An outstanding footballer, he spent two years during his teens at the FA school of excellence. He remains an avid Manchester City fan but these days the support is reciprocated: City manager Kevin Keegan plus a clutch of Premiership players, including Steven Gerrard, Nicky Butt, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Nicky Weaver cheer him on at ringside. So do some of the stars of Coronation Street: a Hatton fight in Manchester has become a celebrity bash of Hello magazine proportions.
Yet when Hatton planned to turn professional a routine medical examination discovered a hole in his heart. A specialist said it was the result of being so active at such a young age and that it was nothing to worry about. The six years since have seen Hatton lift the WBU title belt and bring some much-needed excitement back into a British boxing scene tired of the preening Prince Naseem and an increasingly lacklustre Lennox Lewis.
To put his pulling power in perspective, Lewis' last fight in Britain barely sold 11,000 tickets over many weeks; Hatton sells out the 20,000-seater MEN Arena in Manchester every single time in just a matter of days. The reason they flock is simple - exceptional fitness out of the ring translates into excitement in it. "I go for the knockout but if it doesn't come I set such a high pace that it isn't in any doubt," says Hatton. In Britain, only WBO super-middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe compares.
Hatton was so feared as an amateur boxer that his main problem was not being able to get fights, nobody wanted to fight the bundle of energy because they so deeply feared his punching power, triple left-hooks and ability to use attack as his best form of defence. An international, Hatton came up against powerhouses like Russia and Cuba. At the 1996 World junior championships, Hatton was as impressive as anything there, managing to overcome the No.1 ranked Cuban (and pre-tournament favourite) before finding himself on the end of a complete robbery at the semifinal stage after dominating the Russian who went on to win the gold medal, Hatton was so incensed at the verdict that he threw his bronze medal in a drawer and says he has never looked at it since.
Against Phillips, the only man to hold a professional victory over Kostya Tszyu, the most highly regarded of the world light-welterweight champions, Hatton's constant in-yer-face style and rib-crunching body punches were more ferocious than ever. The blistering pace impressed even Phillips. "I described him before the fight as being like a baby Rocky Marciano, so it didn't shock me when he kept on coming," he said. "I found out that he's more skilled than I expected, alsorts of feints and punches from alsorts of angles. He's also very smart in there, never fools for the same feint twice. I think he can give Kostya Tszyu a hell of a fight and I'm not sure that Tszyu is going to be able to take the pressure that he brings."
Not since Barry McGuigan emerged in the 1980s have the American fight fans warmed so much to a British boxer. "They say I fight like one of them or a Mexican," says Hatton, who adds without a trace of irony: "The Americans appreciate a good war."
The Phillips fight catapulted Hatton into the top five of all the governing bodies' rankings and now Hatton is hungry to add to his belt collection. "I've made nine defences of my WBU title and now I want one of the big four world titles, but lets be honest, nobody is in a hurry to face me!" said Ricky.
After the Phillips fight Hatton enjoyed some extended down time when, off-season and well above his fighting weight, he agreed to take part in a new version of seventies TV show Superstars.
Then it was back to business at Betta Bodies gym in Denton, Manchester, the new home of trainer Billy 'The Preacher' Graham's Phoenix boxing camp, to prepare for fight number 33. With his next fight expected this autumn, here's how he prepares.
Hatton's goal is to build his capacity to explode for 36 minutes punctuated by 11 1-minute rests. For any fighter, maintaining a high tempo over 12 rounds is a serious challenge. When you're Hatton, and aim to set a pace your opponent can't match you have to go beyond even that, which is why he trains for a 15-round contest. "That way I have three in the bank," he says.
After each fight Hatton has about a fortnight off before returning to the gym, even if his next opponent hasn't been named yet. "Just as the average person goes to work five or six days a week it's the same for me," he says. "I need to keep ticking over." Hatton trains for around three hours early afternoon. The idea at this stage is just to stay sharp and maintain a decent level of fitness. The light-welterweight limit is 10 stone and it's dangerous for a fighter to let their weight go too far beyond the limit. He usually does three rounds of shadow boxing to warm up, 10 rounds on the punch bag and half an hour of skipping.
Serious training begins two months before a bout. From here on in everything is geared towards hitting a peak eight days before he steps into the ring. His fitness level is unlikely to drop in the space of a week and by now it's important to wind down and recover. While training can be brutal, it isn't quite how it is portrayed in the Rocky films. Hatton doesn't get up at 4.00am to go running, eat raw eggs or spend countless hours punching a bag. His workouts are relatively short, intense sessions. His weekly routine consists of three hard days on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and two easy days on Tuesday and Thursday.
"A lot of fighters train hard every day and it's detrimental," says Graham. "The body needs to recover between training sessions. The heart is a muscle so if you punish it every day it never gets time to recover."
On hard days, Hatton's training involves three core elements: sparring with other boxers, jumping an iron bar and punching a unique body belt worn by his trainer. The belt looks like a huge leather waistcoat with eight inches of foam padding. Because it offers so much protection it enables Hatton to unleash his fiercest body shots without Graham having to go to casualty. The body belt combines the best of sparring and traditional bag work because it lets Hatton work at full speed and intensity in a realistic fight situation. There are other fitness spin-offs. "With all the padding it's like punching a pillow, which is more tiring than hitting something solid," says Ricky. "Believe me, it is an absolute killer. Until you've tried it you've no idea how hard it is." Jumping a bar sounds easy in comparison but when it's four foot high and you're expected to leap it 42 times a minute it's anything but. "If you do less than 40 you get a rollicking for slacking," says Hatton. This Billy Graham doesn't preach hell; he sends his fighters there.
Sparring is the third and more traditional element of Graham's regime. All boxers spar but the volume and intensity differs. Sheffield trainer Brendan Ingle is famous for not allowing any head punches. Graham, like the majority of trainers, allows them but is careful to limit sparring sessions for health and fitness reasons. "You shouldn't have a war in the gym but you have to get used to taking a shot," says Hatton, who sometimes spars with his brother Matthew. "Some fighters do 12 rounds sparring every day but to me that's taking too much out of your body."
To simulate boxing matches Hatton's training is broken down into three-minute rounds with a minute's rest in between. However, he doesn't do an entire three minutes on either belt or bar: he alternates between the two exercises. So if he starts with a minute on the bar, he then goes straight into a minute on the belt followed immediately by another minute on bar. That's one round. He rests for a minute then does a full three minutes sparring. That's another round. Rest again. His third round is a minute each on belt-bar-belt, and so on. In the eight weeks before a fight he builds up the rounds from eight to 12, before concluding with one phenonimal 15-round workout.
part one
When the great Manchester light-welterweight Ricky 'The Hitman' Hatton steps into the ring he knows that if he doesn't knock his opponent out, he can wear him out instead.
Hatton, 24, is probably Britain's fittest boxer. Each minute of each round is thunderous, full-on brutality: if his punches don't get you, exhaustion will. "I don't think there's a fighter in Britain who can match my work rate," he says.
To be so ruthless in the ring requires dedication out of it.
Hatton's preparations must ensure he has enough fuel to sustain his extraordinary work rate throughout the championship distance of 12 three-minute rounds. A perfect career record of 32 wins from 32 fights, 25 of which were achieved inside the distance, suggests he's doing something right.
Hatton's love of an old-fashioned tear-up has drawn comparisons with some of the great champions of the past. But while his style is old school, his training certainly isn't.
He recently moved gyms to work with sports scientist and former British bodybuilding champion Kerry Kayes on improving his strength and nutrition and says that in his last fight, in which he defeated American Vince Phillips in probably his finest performance so far, he 'felt fitter than any of the last 31'.
Boxing is, after all, known as the sweet science and when you're facing against some of the meanest mothers to spit in a bucket, in the biggest pay days of your life, it isn't advisable to leave anything to chance.
Ironically, Hatton's extraordinary fitness almost cost him his professional career. As a child he was already hyperactive. At nine he was kickboxing; two years later he began boxing. An outstanding footballer, he spent two years during his teens at the FA school of excellence. He remains an avid Manchester City fan but these days the support is reciprocated: City manager Kevin Keegan plus a clutch of Premiership players, including Steven Gerrard, Nicky Butt, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Nicky Weaver cheer him on at ringside. So do some of the stars of Coronation Street: a Hatton fight in Manchester has become a celebrity bash of Hello magazine proportions.
Yet when Hatton planned to turn professional a routine medical examination discovered a hole in his heart. A specialist said it was the result of being so active at such a young age and that it was nothing to worry about. The six years since have seen Hatton lift the WBU title belt and bring some much-needed excitement back into a British boxing scene tired of the preening Prince Naseem and an increasingly lacklustre Lennox Lewis.
To put his pulling power in perspective, Lewis' last fight in Britain barely sold 11,000 tickets over many weeks; Hatton sells out the 20,000-seater MEN Arena in Manchester every single time in just a matter of days. The reason they flock is simple - exceptional fitness out of the ring translates into excitement in it. "I go for the knockout but if it doesn't come I set such a high pace that it isn't in any doubt," says Hatton. In Britain, only WBO super-middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe compares.
Hatton was so feared as an amateur boxer that his main problem was not being able to get fights, nobody wanted to fight the bundle of energy because they so deeply feared his punching power, triple left-hooks and ability to use attack as his best form of defence. An international, Hatton came up against powerhouses like Russia and Cuba. At the 1996 World junior championships, Hatton was as impressive as anything there, managing to overcome the No.1 ranked Cuban (and pre-tournament favourite) before finding himself on the end of a complete robbery at the semifinal stage after dominating the Russian who went on to win the gold medal, Hatton was so incensed at the verdict that he threw his bronze medal in a drawer and says he has never looked at it since.
Against Phillips, the only man to hold a professional victory over Kostya Tszyu, the most highly regarded of the world light-welterweight champions, Hatton's constant in-yer-face style and rib-crunching body punches were more ferocious than ever. The blistering pace impressed even Phillips. "I described him before the fight as being like a baby Rocky Marciano, so it didn't shock me when he kept on coming," he said. "I found out that he's more skilled than I expected, alsorts of feints and punches from alsorts of angles. He's also very smart in there, never fools for the same feint twice. I think he can give Kostya Tszyu a hell of a fight and I'm not sure that Tszyu is going to be able to take the pressure that he brings."
Not since Barry McGuigan emerged in the 1980s have the American fight fans warmed so much to a British boxer. "They say I fight like one of them or a Mexican," says Hatton, who adds without a trace of irony: "The Americans appreciate a good war."
The Phillips fight catapulted Hatton into the top five of all the governing bodies' rankings and now Hatton is hungry to add to his belt collection. "I've made nine defences of my WBU title and now I want one of the big four world titles, but lets be honest, nobody is in a hurry to face me!" said Ricky.
After the Phillips fight Hatton enjoyed some extended down time when, off-season and well above his fighting weight, he agreed to take part in a new version of seventies TV show Superstars.
Then it was back to business at Betta Bodies gym in Denton, Manchester, the new home of trainer Billy 'The Preacher' Graham's Phoenix boxing camp, to prepare for fight number 33. With his next fight expected this autumn, here's how he prepares.
Hatton's goal is to build his capacity to explode for 36 minutes punctuated by 11 1-minute rests. For any fighter, maintaining a high tempo over 12 rounds is a serious challenge. When you're Hatton, and aim to set a pace your opponent can't match you have to go beyond even that, which is why he trains for a 15-round contest. "That way I have three in the bank," he says.
After each fight Hatton has about a fortnight off before returning to the gym, even if his next opponent hasn't been named yet. "Just as the average person goes to work five or six days a week it's the same for me," he says. "I need to keep ticking over." Hatton trains for around three hours early afternoon. The idea at this stage is just to stay sharp and maintain a decent level of fitness. The light-welterweight limit is 10 stone and it's dangerous for a fighter to let their weight go too far beyond the limit. He usually does three rounds of shadow boxing to warm up, 10 rounds on the punch bag and half an hour of skipping.
Serious training begins two months before a bout. From here on in everything is geared towards hitting a peak eight days before he steps into the ring. His fitness level is unlikely to drop in the space of a week and by now it's important to wind down and recover. While training can be brutal, it isn't quite how it is portrayed in the Rocky films. Hatton doesn't get up at 4.00am to go running, eat raw eggs or spend countless hours punching a bag. His workouts are relatively short, intense sessions. His weekly routine consists of three hard days on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and two easy days on Tuesday and Thursday.
"A lot of fighters train hard every day and it's detrimental," says Graham. "The body needs to recover between training sessions. The heart is a muscle so if you punish it every day it never gets time to recover."
On hard days, Hatton's training involves three core elements: sparring with other boxers, jumping an iron bar and punching a unique body belt worn by his trainer. The belt looks like a huge leather waistcoat with eight inches of foam padding. Because it offers so much protection it enables Hatton to unleash his fiercest body shots without Graham having to go to casualty. The body belt combines the best of sparring and traditional bag work because it lets Hatton work at full speed and intensity in a realistic fight situation. There are other fitness spin-offs. "With all the padding it's like punching a pillow, which is more tiring than hitting something solid," says Ricky. "Believe me, it is an absolute killer. Until you've tried it you've no idea how hard it is." Jumping a bar sounds easy in comparison but when it's four foot high and you're expected to leap it 42 times a minute it's anything but. "If you do less than 40 you get a rollicking for slacking," says Hatton. This Billy Graham doesn't preach hell; he sends his fighters there.
Sparring is the third and more traditional element of Graham's regime. All boxers spar but the volume and intensity differs. Sheffield trainer Brendan Ingle is famous for not allowing any head punches. Graham, like the majority of trainers, allows them but is careful to limit sparring sessions for health and fitness reasons. "You shouldn't have a war in the gym but you have to get used to taking a shot," says Hatton, who sometimes spars with his brother Matthew. "Some fighters do 12 rounds sparring every day but to me that's taking too much out of your body."
To simulate boxing matches Hatton's training is broken down into three-minute rounds with a minute's rest in between. However, he doesn't do an entire three minutes on either belt or bar: he alternates between the two exercises. So if he starts with a minute on the bar, he then goes straight into a minute on the belt followed immediately by another minute on bar. That's one round. He rests for a minute then does a full three minutes sparring. That's another round. Rest again. His third round is a minute each on belt-bar-belt, and so on. In the eight weeks before a fight he builds up the rounds from eight to 12, before concluding with one phenonimal 15-round workout.
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