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Ricky Hatton Signed
Boxing Glove
Multi Champion Ricky Hatton Everlast boxing
Glove Autograph. Comes with a photo from the signing a rare
autograph on an Everlast Boxing Glove.
RICKY HATTON
SOLD
At the age of 27, Ricky is an 8 1/2 -year
pro. One of the most exciting fighters in the ring today,
he had a sensational year in 2005, and his accomplishments
stood heads and shoulders above those of every other fighter
in the world. Ricky won the IBF jr. welterweight world title
in June, 2005, unified the WBA world title in November,
and won the "Fighter of the Year" award.
RICKY HATTON IS RING MAGAZINE'S FIGHTER OF
THE YEAR FOR 2005
The Ring is pleased to announce that it has
selected Ricky Hatton as 2005's Fighter of the Year. Hatton
is the first-ever British boxer to receive the award since
its inception in 1928. Hatton earned top honors by stopping
long-reigning junior welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu
at the end of the 11th round on June 4 in Manchester, England.
In his second bout of the year on November 26, Hatton knocked
out WBA junior welterweight titleholder Carlos Maussa in
the ninth round in Sheffield, England.
"Not only did Hatton take the title away
from one of the greatest 140-pounders of all-time and make
his first defense against a highly rated challenger, he
did it in the sort of entertaining and definitive manner
that attracts fans and fills venues," said The Ring's
Editor-in-Chief Nigel Collins.
Hatton joins a long list of famous fighters
to win The Ring's Fighter of the Year award, starting with
then-heavyweight champion Gene Tunney. Other past recipients
include Muhammad Ali ('63, '72, '74, '75, '78), Joe Louis
('36, '38, '39, '41), Rocky Marciano ('52, '54, '55), Ray
Robinson ('42, '51), and Mike Tyson ('86, '88).
From The Ring Extra, April 2006: Working-class,
a member of the darts team at his local pub, the New Inn,
a passionate fan and season ticket-holder at Manchester
City, the football club he has supported since he was a
kid, the club that his father and grandfather both played
for and where he once went for trials himself, these are
Hatton's points of reference, the defining features of one
of the most appealing characters in British sport. When
he trains in the old, converted hat factory, which also
houses a gym full of Manchester's most fanatical bodybuilders,
he regularly attracts a throng of people including actors
and athletes, footballers and writers and, tellingly, the
friends he grew up with on the Hattersley Estate, a place
made infamous in the 1960s by the series of child murders
committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
"It's a tough area, but a good area,
and I've got the same friends now that I've always had and
always will have," said Hatton, sitting in the games
room of his home and reflecting on the most extraordinary
year of his life, a year in which he has reached the pinnacle
of his profession while his personality has not changed
one bit. "I live just five minutes away from the council
estate I grew up on and 45 seconds round the corner from
my mum and dad. I figured last year that it was time I moved
out of my parents' box room. But if I stood in my back garden
and my mum stood in hers, honestly, we could have a conversation
- and sometimes we do. Despite everything that's changed
in my life, I'm still the same person and I'll always be
this way and it would kill me if people ever thought different.
I'm not a flash Harry. I'm no different to anyone else.
I still shop at the local Tesco's and drink with my mates
at the New Inn, the pub my dad had for eight years.
"The day after I beat Kostya, I was there
for what we call our 'sh_t shirt day,' the idea being that
people have to wear the worst shirt possible. This is just
the way I am. I still look on myself as a little kid from
Hattersley and I'll never change."
The influences of his youth are simply too
ingrained. He was 14 the night he was taken by his uncles,
Ged and Paul, to Manchester's Old Trafford stadium to sit
with 40,000 people and watch the second fight between Nigel
Benn and Chris Eubank. "That night I'd never have believed
that years later so many people would come out in support
of me," he said of the impassioned, 22,000-strong crowd
that filled the MEN Arena, the largest indoor arena in Europe,
on the night he beat Tszyu, selling out the place quicker
than when Mike Tyson fought in Manchester in 2000, quicker
even than for the Achtung Baby tour stop made by U2. The
epitome of northern England working-class pride, Hatton
has struck a chord with the British public. Stars of the
England football team are regular attendees at his fights,
while actors and other celebrities feel compelled to be
at ringside.
"The way everything's taken off, the
way people have got behind me, it's hard for me to comprehend,"
Hatton revealed with mild bemusement. "When I look
at The Ring championship belt, I can hardly believe it,
I can hardly believe it's mine, and now to be Fighter of
the Year as well, it's just incredible.
Hatton's popularity is rooted in his down-to-earth
personality. On Thursday nights he plays on the darts team
for the New Inn, where he still comes to drink his mates
under the table, to sing "Suspicious Minds" on
karaoke night, to doll himself up to look like Spice Girl
Geri Haliwell on fancy dress day. His father, Ray, who now
manages the business side of his career, trained him as
a carpet-fitter after he left school, but when he found
him on the job one day, having sliced through three of his
fingers, Ray knew he would have to find something safer
for the older of his two sons to do. He made him a salesman.
"He was crap at that, too," Ray
recalled with a smile, "selling the carpet at cost
price, making no profit whatsoever. But that's just Richard's
nature (at home Hatton is known by the name he was christened),
to be nice to people, to be polite. That's the way he was
brought up to be."
He has always liked to party, too, and even
now, when he is out of training, he is neither temperate
nor vain.
