LEADING THE RENAISSANCE
BRITISH boxing enjoyed a renaissance at the start of the new millennium. Lennox Lewis was the preeminent heavyweight in the world. Naseem Hamed made his mark with a string of knockout victories. And Joe Calzaghe was proving to be a special fighter. But no Brit stirred passions more than Ricky Hatton.
As a boy, Hatton loved Bruce Lee films. He took up kickboxing at age eight but was short and stocky with stubby legs – not good for a kickboxer. Then, when Ricky was 10, his father took him to the Louvalite Boxing Club where his tutelege in conventional fisticuffs began.
Fast-forward seven years.
“I had my own gym,” Billy Graham, who would train Hatton for most of the fighter’s pro career, later recalled. “And I kept hearing about this fighter, Richard Hatton. He was an amateur, and I was getting conflicting reports. Some said he was fantastic. Some said he was just a strong kid. There are lots of kids at seventeen who are strong for their age and can punch but never amount to much. Then, one day, I got a phone call saying he was coming to spar at my gym. He was looking at different gyms to see where he wanted to be. I had more fighters than I wanted but I was curious about him. I let him spar. And what he did, he should not have been able to do at that age. It made my hair stand on end. This kid was the best seventeen-year old I’d ever seen. He could punch. But more important, his balance and anticipation were extraordinary for his age. I told him to have
