Some Ricky Hatton Rumors...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... ao-rumours

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RUMOR MILL IN HIGH GEAR AS HATTON-PACQUIAO SHOWDOWN DRAWS NEAR

Las Vegas is abuzz with speculation and gossip as the atmosphere builds for Saturday night's main event

Ricky hatton sparring

Ricky Hatton finished sparring two days earlier than usual and Las Vegas is abuzz with rumour and conjecture as to why. Photograph: Justin Downing/Sky Box Office

It has taken longer than usual before a big fight in Vegas, but the rumours have started leaking ahead of Ricky Hatton's meeting with Manny Pacquiao on Saturday night.

Rumour 1) Hatton finished his sparring on Wednesday of last week, two days earlier than usual, not because he and his trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr, were happy they could not make him any sharper but because he had to have a cortisone injection in his left elbow.

Hatton shot that one down. He said he's never been fitter before a fight. While he nearly always says that, I could find no confirmation of the story, and he did not appear at all uncomfortable when he met the British press on Monday night. He was alert, relaxed, confident and slim.

"I gave the sparring partners a right hiding," he says. "That's the way you want it to be in your last session. Normally we'd do our last session on the Friday but we didn't need to. There's only one way you can go when you've got it just right, and that's backwards."

Rumour 2) This one is harder to pin down or stand up: Mayweather Sr is seriously put out by the way some members of the entourage are treating him. They ignore him in the gym and, generally, leave him out of the loop.

The story goes that when they went to Los Angeles for a press conference last week, they did not tell him they were staying overnight and he consequently did not bring with him the medication he needs for his debilitating chest condition. Instead, he turned up in his suit, with no change of clothes, and someone had to rush to a drugstore to get his medicine.

If Mayweather, a fiercely proud but vulnerable man, is put out, this might explain a story in the Daily Mirror this week, which quoted him as saying, "I taught Ricky to box. Ricky didn't know anything when I started with him. He had brute strength, that was it. When I first went down to England to see him, you know, it was horrendous. But you look at him today, he's totally different." This, of course, contradicted his earlier view that, "Ricky could win this fight without me. But he has a much better chance with me."

It also does not quite fit with Hatton's take on his development. "I always had a good jab," he says. "I always had good boxing ability, I always had great footwork but I think that certainly in the past five or six years, I haven't used them properly."

Rumour 3) Billy Graham, whom Hatton sacked as his trainer before the Paul Malignaggi fight, is going through with his threat to sue the fighter for 10% of his earnings in the 10 years he was with him. That cut might be as high as £3m. Graham will remember that Kevin Rooney successfully sued Mike Tyson for a similar amount. Whatever, it's sad to hear Graham tell the Sun: "It's been a fairytale and the fairytale has now been ruined. For me it has, anyway. I loved him."

The truth of that story will be tested in the most public forum, the courts.

It might explain, also, Hatton's continued references to the good times with Graham. He peppers nearly every discussion about his switch to Mayweather Sr with phrases such as "Don't get me wrong, what Billy and me had was special." He refers time and again to Graham's failing health and inability to stand up to the rigours of training. What then, of Mayweather, who looks and talks like a man half his age but inside is struggling with lungs that cause him serious pain?

Rumour 4) Hatton was rocked a few times by sparring partners in the early part of his preparation in Las Vegas. Well, what can you say? To buy into this you have to believe that boxing is a no-risk business where the main man gets to throw all the punches, with none coming back. Fighters invariably take a shot or two getting ready for a fight. What the rumour didn't add was that Hatton held the shots.
Lunar atmosphere?

No doubt when Hatton's army arrive in good numbers – later than in the past, given money is tight – they will liven up a town that seems eerily quiet. A walk down the strip the other night was remarkable only for the absence of hubbub. Traffic is lighter. In the casinos, the ching-ching of the fruit machines is not so orchestral. There is more space at the bar and no problem getting a table at a restaurant.

And this is what it is like when the Brits aren't here. No wonder they love Ricky and his fans. He says he went to the recent fight between Ronald "Winky" Wright and Paul Williams at the Mandalay Bay Casino in Vegas and was shocked to see only 4,000 people there.

"And, when I think of how many people come over from Britain to support me on a regular basis and have brought the atmosphere to Vegas, this arena, and they're coming again. I think Las Vegas would have been a dull place if it hadn't been for me and my fans the last few years."

Now that you can believe.
Oscar wanted Manny to knock him out

Some found this hard to believe, but it's not. Hatton revealed this week that Oscar De La Hoya told him he was so dispirited in his fight with Manny Pacquiao that he wanted to be knocked out.

"One thing Oscar De La Hoya told me the other week when I spoke to him, he said, 'Whether I left it on the scales, or whatever it was, I felt lifeless. I was thinking to myself, 'Just find one punch and please knock me out. Put me out of my misery.'

"That's how bad he felt," Hatton continued. "And Manny didn't have the power to put him out of his misery. And he didn't have a leg under him, Oscar. So was it a good performance? Oscar's thinking, 'Just knock me out'. That's how bad and drained he felt."

Disbelieving hacks doubted it. But I remember when Jorge Vaca stopped Lloyd Honeyghan at Wembley in 1987, the temperamental Bermondsey fighter admitting later he was feeling sorry for himself during the fight, "and I just didn't care if he knocked me out".

Sometimes, it is the easiest alternative to taking a prolonged hiding. Boxers always find a way to justify their actions. And they always tell more truths after a fight than before. If Ricky loses on Saturday night, it will be interesting to hear if he really did hurt his elbow, if Floyd really was out of sorts, and if those sparring partners really did knock him about in the gym.