For all of the light-hearted banter - "the way people keep talking about Manny Pacquiao, he should be fighting Godzilla, not me" - Ricky Hatton is more defiant than ever. Only 11 months ago the 30-year-old "Hitman" from Manchester, England, was assailed by doubt. Knocked out for the first time in his career in Dec 2007 by Floyd Mayweather Jr, then the world's best pound-for-pound boxer, Hatton was preparing to face another American, Juan Lazcano, at the City of Manchester Stadium.
"It was my first fight back after getting stopped by Floyd and it was the most nervous I have ever felt before any fight," Hatton recalls in a rented house in a quiet neighbourhood a couple of miles from the Las Vegas Strip ahead of next weekend's showdown with Pacquiao. "Crazy thoughts were going through my head such as 'Am I going to be able to take a punch any more, now that I've been knocked out? Could I be past it?'
"Then I had to go 12 hard rounds against Lazcano having suffered from a chest infection in training, my brain was in bits with all the pressure and my performance wasn't vintage. I was pleased to get through it but, to be honest, I really thought about quitting a couple of times after that fight. "Boxing is a sport which forces you to be completely honest with yourself. Otherwise you can get badly hurt. I've always been a sensible lad and I was concerned that I had stopped using my jab and my boxing ability.
"Financially I didn't need to carry on because I've done all right, but I didn't want to get out of boxing that way. I've always sought the biggest challenges, so after beating Paulie Malignaggi last November here I am again fighting the guy who is ranked pound-for-pound the best in the world since Floyd's retirement - and right now I can't wait for May 2." On the other side of the ring at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday will be a 29-year-old Filipino who comes off his stool "like a typhoon [from] across the Pacific" - in the immortal words of HBO commentator Larry Merchant.
As a teenager, Pacquiao landed in Manila from his home in Bukidnon with no relatives to support him, just a boxing trainer, Alberto Mang Eleng, who came to his rescue and offered him lodgings. In Bukidnon he worked as a baker so that he could put bread on the table for his family and in Manila he became a tailor. He also worked in construction, laid down steel in buildings and painted houses. He survived and honed his skills as a fighter, his fiercely aggressive style and a determination which he honed while homeless on the streets of Manila winning him world titles at flyweight, super bantamweight, featherweight and lightweight.
Having secured iconic status in the Philippines - so much so that rebel and government forces hold steadfast to a temporary ceasefire whenever he boxes - Pacquiao climbed to welterweight last December and, weighing almost 3st heavier than when he began as a 7st 8lb light flyweight, ended the career of Oscar De La Hoya, forcing boxing's "Golden Boy" to stay on his stool at the end of eight painfully one-sided rounds.
Hatton was ringside that night at the MGM Grand and acknowledged Pacquiao's outstanding performance. But the fact that De La Hoya was, in boxing terms, a dead man walking has convinced him to dismiss this bout as a form guide. "People are looking at the Oscar performance and suggesting that he'll finish my career, too, but he won't," Hatton says. "Oscar was like a walking corpse that night. But I have plenty left in the tank, believe me.
"He is in for one hell of a shock when he realises just how much boxing ability and hand speed I have. "I can fight going backwards, too, and I know he can't. He does all of his punching on the front foot. He shuffles in and out constantly but when he punches he's always coming forward. "He doesn't get leverage on the back foot and, in order to punch on his front foot, he will have to come into my territory.
"Everyone expected Malignaggi to out-jab and out-speed me but I was the one beating him to the punch and dominating. "I accept that Pacquiao has improved his technique over the years, especially since he began working with Freddie Roach as his trainer, but he's as easy to hit now as he's always been and he's been shaken up several times and stopped twice by body shots. "If a couple of flyweights have been able to stop him, what do you think I'll be able to do, the biggest man he will ever have faced outside of Oscar? I hear people talking about his speed but these guys shook him up caught him and I don't know if he can improve the punch resistance in his chin and body.
"I genuinely believe I'll be too big and too powerful for him and my boxing ability, which has always been there, Floyd is bringing out in me more." Floyd Mayweather Sr became Hatton's trainer within eight months of the Mancunian's defeat by Mayweather's son. It is his strict regime which Hatton, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, credits for making him "step out at 5.30 in the morning to run for five miles" as opposed to "the usual routine of getting in at 5.30 in the morning after a night on the town".
Hatton's long association with Billy Graham, who trained him for his first fight against Colin McAuley in 1997 at Kingsway Leisure Centre in Widnes and was still in his corner 11 years later for the Lazcano bout, had run its course. "Billy had not been doing as much as he had done in previous training camps, probably because of injuries to his hands and arms and he lost a bit of enthusiasm," Hatton reflects.
"Floyd brings enthusiasm into the camp every day. "He's helped to make me fitter, faster and stronger than I've ever been. I was too fast for Malignaggi and that was after working with Floyd for only seven, eight weeks. Now we're in our second camp together and the effect is very much in evidence in everything I do each day in the gym." In his old gym in Denton on the outskirts of Manchester, Hat- ton would attract dozens of fans, drawn daily by the working-class instincts which one of Britain's true sporting heroes has always epitomised.
For every celebrity friend he has acquired through fame, such as the Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney and Oasis brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, who have all carried his world title belts to the ring, he has many more from the tough housing estates similar to the one in which he grew up. "The Hattersley estate, where I'm from in Hyde on the outskirts of Manchester, is infamous for the Moors murders [committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who killed five children between 1963 and 1965]," Hatton says.
"In fact, when you walked out the back of the New Inn pub [once owned by his father, Ray] you came straight to where they lived and where some of the murders actually happened. "The house is no longer there but everyone knows where it was. "Hyde is also the place where Harold Shipman [the doctor who became the most notorious serial killer in British history, killing up to elderly 215 patients before his arrest and conviction in 2000] had his clinic, so we've had more than our fair amount of bad news from around here.
"I've always wanted to generate better news for the area through my boxing career and I think people have always been able to relate to me because, as a person, I've never changed. "Maybe it's because of the way I fight that people who don't know me might think I'm a headcase but I surprise people when they meet me. "In the ring I'm aggressive, a bit of a roughhouse, but once the gloves are off and I'm out with my friends I'm a very laidback bloke.
"I don't think I should get any credit for being nice to people because that's just the way I was brought up to be, so that's the way I am. It costs nothing to be polite. "When something like 35,000 British people descended on Vegas for my fight with Mayweather I couldn't have felt more proud or more determined to win. Sadly, it didn't go my way that night. "The current economic downturn has hit everybody hard and I don't think we'll get 35,000 British people coming in this time but 10,000 came for Malignaggi and that was a month before Christmas, so I think 20,000 could come.
"This would be phenomenal and, with all the Filipinos that Manny brings in, the atmosphere during fight week is going to be fantastic." On previous trips to the world's fight capital, Hatton has collected various items of memorabilia ranging from a Girls! Girls! Girls! movie poster signed by Elvis Presley to a life-sized statue of a butler whom he has named Cyril. "He's about 6ft tall and very heavy," Hatton says.
"The day he arrived I stood him in the hallway because I couldn't shift him any further and I went out for a beer the next night. "I got home after one in the morning, opened the door and I nearly died of shock with this big geezer just stood there. "I've always been interested in other sports and movies. Collecting memorabilia is something I got into several years ago. The games room in my house is full of all kinds of stuff - Phil Taylor's darts which he threw when winning his 10th world championship, a guitar signed by Liam and Noel Gallagher, boots, dressing gown, shorts, gloves and pictures all signed by Muhammad Ali and displayed in a big montage, an LA Galaxy shirt signed by David Beckham and a pair of his match-worn boots and a Manchester City shirt signed by Ali Bernabia.
"I even have the original Trotters Independent Traders three-wheel van, complete with blow-up doll for the passenger seat, parked at the back of my house. "There's always been more to my life than my boxing and supporting Manchester City, obviously, is one of my big passions. My dad played for the club in the great era of Colin Bell, Franny Lee and Mike Summerbee and I had trials there as a kid. "I even gave a pep talk to the players before a game against Fulham once when Kevin Keegan was manager. It finished 0-0, the game was dire and they never asked me back to the dressing room, funnily enough.
"But I've got my after-dinner speaking gigs, a talk show on TV and all of that's going well, though none of it matters while I'm preparing for perhaps the biggest fight of my life." Having allegedly sunk "57 pints, 17 vodka and Red Bulls, four vodkas, three whisky chasers, and a bottle of Moet champagne" in one "titanic booze bout" in Tenerife lasting four days, according to a British tabloid newspaper, Hatton has lived the prescribed monastic existence ahead of meeting Pacquiao.
His face looks chiselled and his body is lean and hard. The fists which have stopped 32 of the 45 men he has beaten over the past dozen years have been hard at work on heavy bags and sparring partners for more than two months. So how will he fare against Pacquiao? "Ricky's a good body puncher and Manny will have to be careful but I think the styles work great for us and Manny will win inside three rounds," Roach, Pacquiao's trainer, predicts.
"I know how lifestyle affects a fighter because I lived that life, too. It caught up with me and it will catch up with Ricky." Not yet, Hatton asserts. "Manny fights with a lot of pride," he says. "When he gets caught by a punch or several punches he bangs his gloves and comes firing back. That will be his downfall against me. "I don't think this fight will go the distance. We're not distance- type fighters. We both go for the knockout.
"But Manny has boxed only two fights above 9st 4lb and I believe I can take his power. Can he take mine, a true 10st fighter all my life? I don't think so. When he gets drawn into the fight and starts firing straight back that will play into my hands." The "Hitman" doubts himself no longer. "I was the underdog when I won the world light welterweight title from Kostya Tszyu four years ago and I don't mind being the underdog again," Hatton adds.
"It's always better to win as the underdog." bdoogan@thenational.ae
