War and Peace: My Story Read online

  The gym I had in the cellar was just about the size of a small ring. On the walls we had fight posters of Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, and former heavyweight champions Leon Spinks and Mike Tyson. I had a corner where I would keep my skipping rope, gloves and hand weights, and there was a mat which, when I’d done all of my floorwork, I would lean up against the wall. The punchbag and floor-to-ceiling ball would come down and be put away when me and Mick did the pads. I just ate, slept and breathed boxing – I was pretty much training like a pro from the outset. Even when I was due to fight on a Monday I was asking about possibly fighting on a Tuesday. More often than not I didn’t get a fight but it didn’t really matter to me, I just loved being around boxing, full stop.

  When I trained down in the cellar some nights there was a steady flow of people coming to watch me train with a beer in their hand; some would go and get another pint from the bar and keep coming down for hours.

  Even though I was so young I enjoyed it in the pubs, it was character building. You would look across the bar and think, ‘Jeez, I don’t want to end up like him.’

  I think that’s one of the reasons Dad never drank. I don’t really know how that came about, but he had played football for City and it was just something he was never entertained by. I asked him one day and he just said, ‘It’s always been the case. I never really fancied it, wasn’t into the nightclub thing. I was into sport. And when I was in the pubs and saw the sights across the bar I thought I’d made the right decision.’

  Each to their own.

  And Dad was always a grafter. He always worked hard. He had six or seven pubs, two carpet shops, and even before that he worked on the markets. He wasn’t scared of rolling up his sleeves so that we could have the good things in life.

  But in a local there’s always the little old guy who sits in the corner by the dartboard, and as a kid I would challenge the regulars to games of darts. There’s a fella who thinks he can pull women every five minutes and another fella who’s the next Maradona, or so he thinks. They’re characters you get in every bar up and down the country.

  It was great, and I had a very good upbringing in the pub; later, when my dad started up a carpet shop, I was going out to people’s houses and fitting them, dealing with the public.

  The area where I spent my childhood often got headlines for the wrong reasons. The exact house where the Moors murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, lived several years earlier was just two hundred yards away from where we lived. It was destroyed in 1987. My younger brother Matthew and I used to go to primary school with the son of the infamous serial killer Dr Harold Shipman, who murdered more than 200 patients after moving into the area in the 1970s. Greater Manchester was in the headlines again in 2012 when two female police officers responded to a call in Hattersley only to be attacked by Dale Cregan, a fugitive who was on the run and who phoned in a false call-out to ambush the women – using guns and grenades. Some of the nicest people in the world come from the area but sadly it’s not known for that.

  Boxing has always helped people in the poorer sections of society, and some boys in and around Hyde ended up being taken to the gym to iron out kinks in their behaviour, but there really wasn’t any of that with me. I think I only ever had one fight at school. That was in the first year, and no one wanted to fight me again because I flattened him. My teachers always said I was never any trouble; good as gold, they said, and they were right. The thing was I was bone idle. If my son, Campbell, had the same attitude as I used to have, I’d wring his bleeding neck. I was more interested in boxing, football, City, anything. I just wasn’t into schoolwork, studying or exams. I thought I didn’t need to do it because I was going to be a boxer; I was going to be a world champion. It was a stupid attitude to have because at twelve or thirteen I didn’t know if I was going to make it as a boxer, and I certainly didn’t know if I was going to become a world champion. I just farted around and if I hadn’t made it in boxing I’d have had no exams or qualifications to fall back on; I could have been in a whole heap of trouble.

  I still flirted with football because as an amateur boxer not many of the other kids would fight me. At the start of my teens I had won the schoolboy championships two years on the bounce and had knocked everybody out in every round. I ended up getting byes into the semi-finals and finals because I couldn’t get fights. I was going up and down the country weighing-in at as many shows as possible to try and give myself the opportunity of getting matched. That meant my attendance dropped at football training. I was missing sessions, and Manchester City let me go as a consequence, saying, ‘We’re impressed with what we’ve seen, Ricky, but we haven’t seen enough of you because of your boxing. We’ll keep an eye on you.’ That made my mind up. I packed it in for a couple of years, only to make a brief footballing comeback when one of my friends started a team, Hattersley Youth, on the estate. But I’d set my heart on boxing by then.

  I had moved from the Louvolite and was now at Paul Dunne’s Sale West Boxing Club. Paul used to work with my grandad, my mum’s dad, for a security firm and my grandad said to give Paul’s gym a go and it went from there. I still trained in the pub and in my own time, too, and I could turn my hand to almost anything in the ring. Sometimes I would box and move – using combinations, defence and footwork – the next minute you would see me ripping into my opponent. I would get that red mist, the eye of the tiger, from a very young age. The minute you get caught with a shot, ideally you go into survival mode, go defensive and tuck up. That wasn’t me. If they cracked me with one, you could see steam come out of my ears and I sometimes forgot the main rule of boxing, which is to hit and not get hit. My attitude, which was totally wrong, was: ‘If you hit me, I’ll hit you back harder.’

  By this time it seemed my whole family were into the carpet business. My Uncle Paul, Uncle Ged and my late Uncle John all had carpet shops. Then, when the pubs started to open beyond 3 p.m. on a Sunday they became very hard work, opening really long hours, so my dad gave up on the pubs and gave carpets a go like the rest of the family. It went well for him – and I started to help here and there at R Carpets in Gorton. At first I used to go in at weekends. I think it helped my boxing because I would be chucking underlay on the van, throwing grippers on, putting carpets on and lifting them on the rack; there was a lot of lifting and I think physically that stood me in good stead.

  It was logical that I’d start carpet fitting, I suppose, and if the boxing didn’t work out it was a trade to fall back on. At least I’d be earning. My dad used to say to Pete, who was the main carpet-fitter, ‘Take Ricky out. Show him a few bits.’ At first I was just putting the grippers down, then I would put the underlay in and then I started to learn to fit the carpets. I was probably Manchester’s worst ever carpet-fitter to be honest with you. I was cutting them short, cutting through wires, I was terrible – I’d spend all day on my hands and knees and get home with dozens of plasters on my fingers and must have cost my dad a fortune. In the end he bought me a shop to look after in Hyde and put me in retail. As it turned out, if I was bad at carpet fitting, I was worse as a carpet salesman. It’s just as well I had the boxing to fall back on because I wasn’t much cop at carpets.

  As a family we weren’t very wealthy but we didn’t ever want for anything. Life was good, we were extremely close and if we needed football boots or trainers, we had them; it was the same for boxing gloves and kit, and we always had family holidays. We went to Tenerife, Benidorm, Magaluf, Torremolinos, Turkey and Egypt; we were very fortunate and saw a lot of the world at a young age. We went to Disney World in Florida twice, where it was all very expensive – and some kids will never go – so we were very lucky.

  It wasn’t all about pricey foreign holidays, either; we went to Blackpool a lot, too. We had some great times there. My dad’s mum and dad – Nan and Grandad – had a caravan in Blackpool and we would go three or four times a year. It was me, my younger brother Matthew, Mum and Dad, and Nan and Grandad. We would go to Pleasure Beach, th
e Sandcastle – I’ve taken my own son and there’s loads of fond childhood memories there. The good times always go through your mind, and when we’re queuing up to go on the rides they come flooding back to the surface, like my lunch almost does whenever I’ve had to go on them.

  Now, although I was always pretty quiet as a kid, my brother Matthew had a right mouth on him. He also has a dry sense of humour and will take the piss out of you without you knowing he’s doing it. He used to mouth off and wind other kids up, and when it went tits up, he’d shout, ‘Rick, sort this out.’ I cleared up a lot of his trouble. He was a little shit; worse than that, he ended up supporting Manchester United.

  It was in the New Inn, he was only about eight years of age, and one of the customers came and said, ‘What team do you support then, Matthew?’ He didn’t know who he supported so the fella gave him a United badge. It was the size of a one-pence piece and Matthew was so impressed with this ‘medal’ he ended up supporting United.

  We’ve had our arguments like all brothers do but we were very close when we were younger. He took a shine to boxing, too.

  I was getting into the sport more and more seriously. It didn’t always go my way, of course; I also lost fights. I was eleven years old when I thought my world was coming to an end. Robbie Grainger was a good fighter from Liverpool, and he’d beaten me on points. It was close but I thought I deserved the decision; I ended up boxing him a couple of years later and beat him. Then I was beaten by another lad from Liverpool, Tommy Lewis; I’d defeated him the first time but lost the rematch. There was a balcony over the ring that night and the changing rooms were upstairs. I took it so badly I didn’t want to go downstairs, let alone go home; it was my second loss and my mum had to come in and get me because I was up there sulking and crying. ‘Pull your face up,’ my mum – who was my biggest fan – said.

  Sale West was a small Manchester club that had some good kids but never anyone who’d gone on to national titles or anything like that. A couple of lads went pro but never really did anything. It was in the community centre, a basic place, and I got on well with Paul Dunne from the start. Paul was a former pro who’d had thirty fights and won more than he lost. He had a thick Irish accent that was hard for me to understand at first but from the outset he taught me how to roll, how to box and how to weave, which in the amateur game is quite rare.

  Even as a novice I had been catching shots and throwing body punches – and I used to knock people out on a regular basis with body shots, which is not something you see much of in the amateurs. As a schoolboy, people were saying, ‘There’s this kid from Manchester who can’t half body punch.’ I’d just been brought up that way. Paul guided me to eight national schoolboy titles, and he and his chief coach, Jimmy Taylor, took me everywhere. My dad was there, too – if I needed to get to a fight he was always good about taking me there – but usually Paul and Jimmy did most of the driving and we were up and down the country looking for as many opportunities to get fights as we could.

  If I had a fight on a Monday, weighed in and then the fight didn’t happen for whatever reason, then I would go to fights with some of the other lads on the Tuesday and weigh-in there and hope to get matched. Then, on Wednesday, another couple of lads from the gym might be fighting somewhere else so I’d jump in the car and go with them, then weigh-in and try to get a fight. Even if I wasn’t matched I was such a boxing junkie that being on the road and being surrounded by the sport every night was my life. It was all I wanted to do.

  I trained every day, with the sounds of Oasis filling the cellar or my headphones when I was in the gym or out on the road. The minute this Manchester band came bobbing along I was constantly listening to them. I liked Oasis from the start, with ‘Roll With It’ and ‘Wonderwall’, all the songs that would become classics. I had them on when I was training for the schoolboys, in the junior ABAs . . . I’ve always been a very proud Mancunian. I supported City and listened to Oasis and the moment I heard a Manchester band was doing all right I said, ‘Okay, let’s have a listen to them.’ As much as I love City, and come derby day I always want us to knock ten bells out of Manchester United, later in my career, whether people were City or United fans, they would all come to support me. There aren’t many fighters who can unite two sets of supporters but when I was fighting, I did it.

  I had a little following, too. My mum and dad were my first supporters and, as I got older and the fights got bigger, we would take a load of regulars from the pub, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen people or so, as well as my wider family and some pals, and we would shoot off to Leyland or Nantwich or Wigan.

  It was the ABA youth titles and early stoppage wins that set me apart from a lot of other boxers my age. I was mature in the ring and you could tell that from when I boxed a kid called Jamie Moore.

  I was only about fourteen when we boxed in the schoolboys at Blackpool and whereas I’d already won a load of titles, Jamie was only having what I think was his eighth fight. He was a southpaw and dressed a bit like me, all in black – black vest, black shorts and black boots. I thought, ‘Jesus, he looks a scrapper.’ He looked at me, put his arms out and beckoned me in, saying, ‘Come on then.’ It was like looking in the mirror: ‘This fella is coming for a fight.’ He meant business. Jamie came out and I threw a few jabs, then followed them with a left hook and was really impressed by the way he rolled under the punch. I actually spun round and thought, ‘Eight fights? He must be a ringer. That was good.’

  A little later in the round, I barged up to him on the ropes and fired a left hook to the body, forcing him to bring his hands down, and I pinged one over the top. Little Jamie went down, got up and I hit him with a few more so the referee gave him a standing count. Then I followed up, hit him with a load more and the referee stopped it. After the fight, and bear in mind I was only fourteen so I don’t know who I thought I was, I said, ‘Hi ya, Jamie, all right?’ He said he was okay.

  ‘I don’t want to sound patronizing,’ I carried on, ‘because it was over in the first round, but I was quite shocked you’d only had eight fights. I’m pleased I caught you when I did because I was in for a hard night. Don’t be disheartened. Stick at it.’ I was fourteen and giving that kind of advice. I’ve been mates with Jamie, who went on to win the European light-middleweight title as a professional, ever since.

  It was wins like that that meant I was hard to match. Even by the age of about twelve or thirteen they had started calling me ‘The Hitman’. Ted Peate gave me the nickname because I was so aggressive. He would say, ‘Jesus Christ. Look at him, here, the Hitman.’ I looked like I wanted to kill everyone because I was so aggressive. It got to the point where other trainers and parents were refusing to put their boys in with me. There was an article in the old Amateur Boxing Scene magazine, which Boxing News used to bring out, after my coach called them, saying I was a nightmare to get fights for:

  Any club looking for an opponent for a 17/18 year old weighing 65kgs need only contact Paul Dunne. Paul is the Sale West coach and Richard Hatton is the boxer willing to travel anywhere and everywhere for a bout (Europe included). The club are experiencing great difficulty in finding opponents for this talented young boxer.

  We were constantly putting adverts out like that, but we were hardly inundated with replies.

  Paul Dunne started taking me around all of the professional gyms for sparring when I was about sixteen. We went down to the Collyhurst and Moston Lads Club with Brian Hughes and I used to spar with people like European champion Pat Barrett, Delroy Waul and Robin Reid when he was world super-middleweight champion. Pat was a real puncher and he knocked me down once with a body shot, a left hook to the body, and it was the first time I’d ever been down from one and I’d never felt pain like it. I was quite good for my age so Pat had to open up to keep me off – and rightly so – and he hit me to the body, nearly snapping me in two. I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a bit good. I need to be able to throw them.’ I couldn’t get my breath and was in real pain, and that’s w
hen I realized, really, that – with me being short and stocky – body shots could be the way forward.

  I’d also go over to Salford and train at Billy Graham’s gym, the famed Phoenix Camp. Carl Thompson, the WBO cruiser-weight champion, who was also there, said, ‘Hey, Ricky, if you stay at this you’re going to be a world champion. You can go all the way.’

  When people like that started telling me, I really began to believe it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Learning a Trade

  I wasn’t like any other teenager; boxing was all I wanted to do. I trained and fought whenever I could, watched what I could and learned as much as possible about the sport. I was madly into two-time world champion Nigel Benn; round then there was him, Chris Eubank, Michael Watson and Steve Collins. I wanted to be Nigel Benn, he was dead exciting; every punch was a hook, he never took a backward step and was very aggressive – Nigel was everything to me. I actually went to his second fight with Chris Eubank at Old Trafford. I was about sixteen and I had saved and saved all of my pocket money for a ticket. I went with my Uncle Ged, an even more die-hard City fan than me. He was absolutely ruthless when it came to United but we always said we would go and watch City play there – and we’d go to watch a boxing match there – but that’s pretty much it. I think I paid £50 for my ticket; it took me forever to save up: ‘Wow, £50, I’m going to have a great seat.’ I was right at the back and the fighters looked like two full stops. I was absolutely gutted, but I was enthralled by Benn and like him I was very aggressive when I fought.