There are likely to be tens of thousands of reasons why we ought not to take Ricky Hatton’s so-called ‘friend’ Emma Bowe at face value when she claims she did what she did to the ‘Hitman’ out of the goodness of her heart.
Bowe is the Irish boxer and sometime Hatton acquaintance who told of Hatton allegedly snorting cocaine during a party in a Manchester hotel.
But the cynicism with which such weekly exclusives have now come to be greeted ought not obscure an unpalatable truth of which those who have had even the vaguest of interests in Hatton’s career have been well aware.
It is simply this: Hatton needed help and if Bowe succeeds in sending him successfully through a course of rehabilitation then she ought to be thanked for it.
Hatton’s love for Guinness and fast food was so well known it became part of his pay-per-view persona on both sides of the Atlantic: the lad’s lad who hurled pies in the face of dietary convention each time he fought.
He waded to the ring in a blow-up ‘fat suit’ and revelled in the nickname ‘Ricky Fatton’. He allowed his weight to rage out of control in between fights, and ignored those who said his boiling down could not last.
He greeted each big fight morning with a ‘Mega Fryup’ at his local cafe in Hyde, insisting blithely that it would be wrong to alter a full-fat routine which had oozed him so far in his career.
It is for the physical experts to say whether Hatton’s career-long abuse of the scales had any bearing on the way he finished up flat on his back in his two truly big fights against Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
The worries that began to emerge shortly after his loss to the Filipino were not so much about his ability to bounce back to elite level, but about where his love of the black stuff would lead him once he hung up his gloves.
There were whispers that Hatton was being nudged towards fighting again because some close to him privately believed he could sustain more damage in retirement than he ever could when his mind was consumed by fighting.
It has long been accepted wisdom that in a boxer’s career his hardest fight is always the one he has with his conscience when he knows deep down it is time to quit but his heart propels him to seek to defy age and time.
The harsh realities of the post-fight world have sent many boxing superstars spinning out of control: the sport is full of hard-luck stories of champions who have fallen from grace in spectacular fashion.
Fighters who earned tens of millions of dollars have ended up bankrupt. Champions who thrilled the world have ended up cleaning toilets or being paraded in hotel foyers like little more than circus freaks.
Drink and drugs have claimed too many fighters to mention, and it must be hoped that they will not claim Hatton, who to his credit has done as much as possible to soften the blow of his departure from the ring.
He has a thriving promotional stable with a solid television contract and a number of young stars who hang on the every word of a fighter who was once a good young prospect like them before he went on to grin down from the Vegas billboards.
It would be a crying shame if everything Hatton achieved in the ring is overshadowed by the legacy of a different kind he is in danger of leaving outside the ring, as another post-fight sob story to add to the statistics.
We want to remember the way he battered his way across the Atlantic hauling tens of thousands of supporters in his slipstream; the body-crunching knockouts that brought comparisons with everyone from Marvin Hagler to Thomas Hearns.
If Bowe’s actions are what ultimately proves to have provided the biggest wake-up call of Ricky Hatton’s life, then we ought to be thankful. But it is only those with short memories who would mock a man who brought British sport so much.
