Boxing’s bittersweet weekend – remembering Ricky Hatton and the sport’s cruel beauty

As footage showed Ricky Hatton’s funeral cortege rolling through Manchester on Friday, blacked out limousines shining like poured Guinness, the route was lined by Mancunians clapping and cheering, it was natural to wonder whether boxing would ever see his like again.

A monochrome image of him in retirement, his fighter’s frame made stout by middle age, appeared above the ring the following night in Sheffield for the show topped by Dave Allen and Arslanbek Makhmudov. Applause accompanied the boxing custom of striking the ring bell 10 times when a former champion has passed away.

Ricky Hatton tribute – boxing had stark cruelty reminders this weekend

I’m sure I could hear Ricky saying Kostya Tszyu in that broad accent of his in the fog of my mind and the image of him entwined with his trainer Billy Graham in that moment of absolute joy when he’d beaten the veteran champion swirled into view. Hatton beat many capable men in a distinguished career, but Tszyu remained his pinnacle.

When the crowd of 9,000, who gathered to watch Dave Allen began to sing the Yorkshireman’s name to the tune of ‘There’s only one Ricky Hatton’, the memories stirred were palpable. It is hard to realise that many of those gathered in Sheffield were too young to remember the MEN in full voice. The 10 stone ‘Hitman’ brooding in the distance, waiting to carve up his next opponent. It feels like only yesterday.

Over the entirety of a weekend that began with the black and blue sadness of Manchester, the sport produced reassuring examples that in the shadow of losing a hero, it continues to bring light to those struggling in life.

Chief among them, Dave Allen himself.

A man who has transcended the confines of his ability and overcome a coterie of self-destructive habits to become a respected heavyweight, a bon-a-fide ticket seller and a content family man. He can fight a bit too and is both a more astute analyst and tougher operator than his genial personality and soft features suggest. His missteps, his failings, only further endearing him to a British public who recognise the vulnerability and find encouragement in his renaissance.

There were echoes and reflections from Ricky Hatton everywhere, not least in Dave Allen’s corner where Jamie Moore, who boxed Hatton as a schoolboy and was a life-long friend, was in charge. Adam Smith who provided a heart-felt eulogy for his friend a day earlier, ringside as the blow-by-blow commentator for DAZN.

Bilal Fawaz’s remarkable journey reaches memorable peak

Beneath Allen on the undercard was a rematch for the English Super-Welterweight title between the fancied Junaid Bostan, a young prospect from the neighbouring town of Rotherham, and Bilal Fawaz. Fawaz is a 37-year-old with a life story woven so thick with abuse, despair and loss it was hard to remain impartial as he wrestled control of the fight and took the points victory and the belt. Trafficked from Nigeria to England aged 14, he found himself alone in London by the age of 16.

The expression on Fawaz’s face when the result was announced, defying the narrative of the commentary team, was a glowing reminder of just how much boxing can offer those in the margins of society or struggling under the weight of issues beyond the ring.

Fawaz deserved the victory and Allen the adulation only he seems able to draw in defeat. There was no such fairy story in Philadelphia where Uisma Lima – the Angolan born Portuguese plucked from relative obscurity to face Jared Ennis – was blown away in the opening round.

His remark at the pre-fight press conference that he couldn’t take Ennis challenge to a personal bet on the outcome because, “I don’t have the money you have” did at least add this observer as an interested party for his future fights.

Later that night, away from the boxing spotlight, in a High School Sports Hall in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Jeremy Bates, aged 51 and far removed from his days as an opponent for the great and once were of the heavyweight division and contending with other battles outside the ring too, won his second fight of a comeback. Hopefully, he is drawing what he needs from the familiarity of fighting and doesn’t find himself in harm’s way in the meantime.

Boxing offers much to those in need. Sadly, sometimes, it isn’t quite enough.