It is nearly a year since Floyd Mayweather Jnr landed the perfect left-hook counter to Ricky Hatton’s tired chin in one terrible round on one terrible night in Las Vegas and reminded him of the dangerous subtleties of his profession. At the time of writing, it is only hours since Mayweather’s father, Floyd Snr, doled out more pain to the Mancunian light-welterweight, who is seeking to rebuild his career in America, where he is loved, and in his own mind, where the jury is out. This time there were few witnesses as a tough, skinny old man threatened serious damage to Hatton’s exposed ribs with a medicine ball in a private gym down a side street on the eastern outskirts of the same city.
You would have thought Hatton had seen enough of the Mayweathers. Perhaps there is a sub-conscious masochism at work, employing Old Floyd to conduct a thorough examination of the resolve and technique that was broken down last December by Young Floyd. Maybe Old Floyd is just the best. That’s what he tells everyone. Plenty of people agree.
As the trainer’s bony arms raise the heavy leather ball above his head, his eyes widen in gleeful anticipation of an unanswered strike on the prone, pale body lying on the bench in front of him, much as they might have done when he spotted an opening during a distinguished career that brought him 29 wins as a welterweight in 36 fights between 1974 and 1990. “Christ Floyd,” Hatton yelps, as his trainer drives the flattened ball into the gap between the bottom of his ribs and the top of his hip, “you’re a bloody sadist!”
Half an inch either way, or with the fighter relaxing his tightened abs for the wrong split-second, and the sound of crushed ribs would reach beyond the doors of the desert gym and all the wa
